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The Wisdom of 
Walt Whitman 



The Wisdom of 

Walt Whitman 



SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH 

INTRODUCTION 

BY 

LAURENS MAYNARD 



NEW YORK 
Brentaiio s>. Fifth Avenue 
MCMVIII 















LIBRARY of CONGRESS 






Two Copies Received 






OCT 27 1908 






Copyrig»"it Entry 
CLASS CC XXc, No. 

COPY B. 


,.-•* 








Copyright^ igo8^ by B 


Ventano^s 




t « V 


1 




1 






• 




1 



'Av 



Introduction, xiii-xvi 

I. The Evolution of Personality 
"Ones Self I Sing," 2 

To a Historian, 3 

A Clue to the History of the Past, 3, 4 

What is a Biography? 4 

The Miracle of the Ego, 5 

The Omnipotence of the Ego, 5, 6 

All for You; Whoever You Are, 6 

The Sacredness of the Individual, 7 

Each of us Inevitable and Limitless, 8 

Underneath all Individuals, 8, 9 

Latent Potentialities, 9, 10 

The Development of the Individual, 10-12 

Personal Evolution, 12-14 

The Talk of the Beginning and the End, 14, 15 

The Joy of a Manly Selfhood, 15 

The Immortality of the Individual, 15, 16 

Everything Tallied in the Individual, 16, 17 

Infinity and Eternity for Me, 17-19 

Aspiration, 19 

II. Democracy 

A Word of the Modern, 22 

The Purpose of Democracy, 23 

** Earth's Resume Entire," 24 

Democratic Art, 24-26 

The Influences which Stamp History, 26, 27 



Contents 



/ 



Contents II. DEMOCRACY — Continued 

"The Fervid and Tremendous Idea," 27 

The United States Essentially the Greatest 

Poem, 27, 28 
The Role of the United States in the Universal 

Drama, 29, 30 
"The Modern Composite Nation," 30 
Natal Stars, 31 

The Importance of the Individual, 31 
A Great City, 32 

The Real Man of Divine Essence, 32, 33 
The Genius of the United States, T^^y 34 
What Christ Appeared for, 34, 35 
The Only Safe Formula, 35, 36 
The People, 36 

Literature Has Never Recognized the People, 37 
The Mission of Government, 38 
Where the Great City Stands, 38-40 
America To-day a Seething Mass of Materials, 

40,41 
"Land Tolerating All," 41, 42 
The Value of Politics, 42, 43 
The Evil of Parties, 43 
Faith in Democracy, 44 
Democracy is Law, 44, 45 
Solidarity, 45, 46 
Centrifugal Forces, 46 



VI 



II. Democracy — Continued 

The Gravitation-hold of Property, 46, 47 
The Brotherhood of Democracy, 47, 48 
The Cement of Affection, 48 

III. Love and Comradeship 
"Camerado, I Give You My Hand," 50 
The Base of All Metaphysics, 51, 52 

*T Sing the Body Electric," 52 

The Expression of the Body, 53 

**This is the Female Form," 54 

''Das Ewig Weihliche," 54, 55 

"The Justified Mother of Men," 55, 56 

"The Fullspread Pride of a Man," 56 

Fathers of Fathers and Mothers of Mothers, 57, 

58 

The Need for Perfect Women, 58 

The Sacredness of the Body, 58, 59 

The Meanings of Sex, 59, 60 

Love the Pulse of All, 60, 61 

The Madness of Love, 61, 62 

The Attraction of Affinity, 62, 63 

Reminiscences, 63, 64 

The Safety of the Future, 64 

Companionship, 64, 65 

"To be with Those I Like," 65 

The Adhesive Love in Democracy, 66 

"For You, O Democracy!" 67 



Contents 



Vll 



Contents III. LoVE AND COMRADESHIP — Continued 

The Consolation of Affection, 68, 69 
The Welding of the Nation, 69 
The Yearnings of Solitude, 69, 70 
Universal Brotherhood, 71 
A Vital Bond in Literature, 71, 72 
Invisible Communion, 72 
IV. Religion. 

Passage to Primal Thought, 74 

The Religious Purpose of Leaves of Grass, 75, 76 

After Reading Hegel, 76 

The Emancipation of Religion, 76, 77 

The Immanence of Rehgion, 77 

The Conflict of Theology v^ith Science, 78 

A Child's Amaze, 78 

The Priest of the Future, 78, 79 

All-inclusive Faith, 79 

The Divine Element in all Religions, 79, 80 

The Idea of God, 80 

Joyousness and Health in Religion, 81 

Adoration, 81 

The Illumination of the Individual Soul, 81, 82 

Chanting the Square Deific, 82 

The Reign of Law, 82, 83 

The Consolation of Affection, 83, 85 

The Revolt of Evil, 85 

The Fusing Spirit, 86 






IV. Religion — Continued 
Mystic Communion, 86, 87 

The Subjectiveness of Religion, 87 
The Last Ideal, ^^, 89 
Nirvana, 89-91 

V. Death and Immortality. 
Life Cannot Exhibit All, 94 
The Unknown Region, 95 
"Whither O Mocking Life V 96-98 

The Idea of Immortality in Democracy, 98, 99 

"I Know I am Deathless," 99, 100 

"All, All for Immortality ? '' loi 

"The Smallest Sprout Shows that there is no 

Death," 102 
To See the Soul, 102, 103 
The Spirituality of the Material, 104 
Assurances, 104-106 
The Purpose and Essence of the Known Life, 

106-108 
A Carol to Death, 108-110 
"To Explore the Vacant Vast Surrounding," 

no, III 
"Have You Dreaded these Earth-Beetles?" in 
"Life is a Tillage," in 
"Living are the Dead," 112 

VI. Literature and Art. 
Not to Create Only, 114 



Contents 



m 



Contents VI. LITERATURE AND Art — Continued 

The Immortality of Judah and Greece, 115 

The Literature of Feudalism, 115, 116 

Literature and Personality, 116 

The Need of a New Literature, 116 

Superber Themes for Poets, 117 

The Scientific Basis, 117, 118 

Science Not All, 118, 119 

Printed Pages Not Literature, 1 19 

Originality an Art, 120 

'Tear Not, O Muse!" 120 

The English Language, 120, 121 

What is Real Literature? 121-123 

Our Inheritance from the Literature of the 

Past, 123-126 
The Mastery of the Poet, 126 
Historian and Prophet, 126, 127 
No Theme Small to the Poet, 127 
"The Path Between Reality and the Soul,'' 127 
The Pride of the Soul, 127, 128 
The Poet's Passion, 128, 129 
The Test of the Greatest Poet, 129, 130 
The Poetic Quality, 130 
The Fruition of Beauty, 130 
Rhyme and Rhythm, 130, 131 
Simplicity in Art, 131 
"The Flawless Triumph of Art," 131 



VI. Literature and Art — Continued 

How to Live Poetry, 131, 132 

The Final Test of Poems, 133 
VIL The Conduct of Life. 

Independence, 136 

The Greatness of the Present, 137 

Now is Our Time, 137 

No Better Minute than this, 138 

The Divinity of the Ego, 138 

Miracles Everywhere, 138-140 

A Model for Manliness, 140, 141 

The Blight of Money-Getting, 141, 142 

Reticence, 142 

Self-Consciousness, 142 

Individuality, 142 

Affirmations, 142, 143 

Conviction, 143 

Courage, 143, 144 

To Fill One's Place is Enough, 144 

Appreciation, 144, 145 

Contentment, 145 

Nature's Lesson, 146 

Compensation, 146, 147 

Prudence, 147, 148 

The Joy of Living, 148, 149 

The Real Economies of Life, 149, 150 

Heroism, 150 



Contents 



Contents VII. The Conduct OF LiFE — Continued 
Living Impulses — Not Duties, 150 
The Superb Individual, 150 
Thrift, 150 

To Those Who have Fail'd, 151 
Self- Appreciation, 151, 152 
The Influence of the Open, 152, 153 
The Test of Wisdom, 153, 154 
Assurance, 154 
Optimism, 154 
Patience, 154 
Egotism, 154 



XU 



THE great difficulty that confronts the 
compiler of a volume of selections from 
Walt Whitman is suggested by John Adding- 
ton Symonds, when he says, that to speak of 
Whitman is like talking about the universe. 
When the limitation of the collection is the 
wisdom of the poet the task is rather one of 
elimination than of selection. Even those who 
are repelled by the form of expression generally 
recognize the deep significance and rare 
wisdom of Whitman's pregnant sentences. 
"What Walt Whitman has to say," writes 
Stevenson, "is another affair from how he 
says it. It is not possible to acquit any one 
of defective intelligence, or else stiff prejudice, 
who is not interested by Whitman's matter 
and the spirit which it represents." Such a 
problem, indeed, confronts him who led into 
some rich mine is permitted to carry forth 
only his arms full of its treasure. From every 
rock, smooth or rough, gleams the precious 
metal; very easily he fills his arms, only to find 
at every turn new nuggets alluring him still 
hesitant to drop a single one already appro- 
priated. 



Intro- 
duction 



ziu 



Intro- 
duction 



But as in the rich vegetation of the tropics 
the most hastily gathered garland will show 
beauty rich and unusual to the unfamiliar eye, 
so even a haphazard choice can hardly fail 
to arrest the attention and excite the interest 
of the reader who has not acquainted himself 
with the writings of this ^compelling master 
of the minds of men. As the present collec- 
tion is expected to appeal mainly to such 
readers it has seemed best to limit the selec- 
tions to certain broad topics which are most 
typical of Whitman's thought. He himself 
has indicated the three principal ideas which 
have dominated his philosophy. 

"The following chants each for its kind I bring 

My Comrade! 
For you to share with me two greatnesses 

and a third one rising inclusive and more 

resplendent, 
The greatness of Love and Democracy, and 

the greatness of Religion." 

Different as these topics appear they are 
in Whitman's thought subtly interdependent. 



XIV 



Love, even in its physical expression, is filled 
with the deep religious instinct, for **the soul 
is not more than the body and the body is not 
more than the soul"; and Love, rising above 
the expression of passion becomes the ad- 
hesive element binding comrades universal 
into a cohesive body-politic while the impulses 
toward reproduction must be refined and sanc- 
tified into the purpose to produce ^*sons and 
daughters fit for these States." 

The sublety of Whitman's thought is such 
that it is not always easy to classify excerpts. 
This passage relates to Democracy, but we 
find that in his ideal Democracy, Religion, an 
individual mystic communion with the divine 
principle, is a vital element, and the two ideas 
are so delicately interwoven that the extract 
would fit into place under either heading. 
The saving grace of these subtleties for the 
compiler is in the fact that if the reader finds 
under one topic a suggestion which leads his 
mind to another subject he will be equally 
likely to find in that place a reciprocal thought 
taking him back to the other. 

In Whitman's conception of the universe 



Intro- 
duction 



XV 



Intro- 
duction 



everything centers upon the individual. The 
evolution of one's own personality is the key- 
note to his v^hole philosophy, and this subject 
therefore stands w^ell as the entrance porch 
to any collection of his utterances. His 
ideas of Literature and Art and of the Conduct 
of Life are subjected always to the demands 
of Democracy and the modern spirit, and are 
expressed vigorously and with a facility of 
phrase that is often finely epigrammatic. His 
highest thought and his most original contri- 
bution to literature will perhaps be found in 
his attitude toward Death. Resignation to 
the inevitable, a serene agnostic calm, a lean- 
ing trust upon the divine mercy — all these 
have been sung by other poets, but none of 
these satisfies Whitman. He first approaches 
the terror of dissolution with a complete con- 
sciousness of continuance in a more perfect 
condition of being in which personal identity 
survives the ravages of the ''earth beetles," 
and chants a welcome to the ''Dark Mother" 
in whom he finds the "loosener of the strict- 
ure-knot called life." 

Laurens Maynard. 



XVI 



I 



I. THE EVOLUTION OF 
PERSONALITY 



One's-Self I sing — a simple separate person; 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse, 

Inscriptions, 



You who celebrate bygones ! 
Who have explored the outward, the 

surfaces of the races, the life that has ex- 
hibited itself, 
Who have treated of man as the creature of 

politics, aggregates, rulers and priests; 
I, habitan of the AUeghanies, treating of him 

as he is in himself in his own rights. 
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom 

exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in 

himself,) 
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet 

to be, 
I project the history of the future. 

Inscriptions, 



I WAS looking a long while for a clue to 
the history of the past for myself, and 
for these chants — and now I have 
found it. 
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, 

(them I neither accept nor reject,) 
It is no more in the legends than in all else. 
It is in the present — it is this earth to-day. 



To a 
Histo- 
rian 



A Clue 
to the 
History 
of the 
Past 



What is 
a Biog- 
raphy? 



It is in Democracy — (the purport and aim 
of all the past), 

It is the life of one man or one woman to-day 
— the average man of to-day, 

It is in languages, social customs, literatures, 
arts. 

It is in the broad show of artificial things, 
ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern 
improvements, and the interchange of na- 
tions. 

All for the average man of to-day. 

/ was Looking a Long While. 

WHEN I read the book, the biography 
famous. 
And is this then (said I) what the author calls 

a man's life ? 
And so will some one when I am dead and 

gone write my life ? 
(As if any man really knew aught of my life. 
Why even I myself I often think know little 

or nothing of my real life, 
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clues 

and indirections 
I seek for my own use to trace out here.) 



THERE is, in sanest hours, a conscious- 
ness, a thought that rises, independent, 
lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, 
shining eternal. This is the thought of Iden- 
tity — yours for you, whoever you are, as 
mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond 
statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth's 
dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only en- 
trance to all facts. In such devout hours, in 
the midst of the significant wonders of heaven 
and earth, (significant only because of the Me 
in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away 
and become of no account before this simple 
idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, 
it alone takes possession, takes value. Like 
the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated 
and look'd upon, it expands over the whole 
earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven. 

Democratic Vistas, 



The 
Miracle 
of the 
Ego 



DAZZLING and tremendous how quick 
the sunrise would kill me. 
If I could not now and always send sunrise 
out of me. 



The 

Omnip- 
otence 
of the 
Ego 



All for 
You: 
Who- 
ever you 
are. 



We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as 

the sun, 
We found our own O my soul in the calm and 

cool of the daybreak. 

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot 

reach, 
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass 

worlds and volumes of worlds. 

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal 

to measure itself, 

It provokes me forever, 

It says sarcastically, 

Walt^ you contain enough^ why dont you let it 

out then ? p » , , ,» 

-^j^ oong of Myself. 

WHOEVER you are! you are he or she 
for whom the earth is soHd and Hquid, 
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon 

hang in the sky, 
For none more than you are the present and 

the past, 
For none more than you is immortality. 

A Song of the Rolling Earth, 



THE man's body is sacred, and the 
woman's body is sacred, 
No matter who it is, it is sacred; 
Is it a slave? — Is it one of the dull-faced 

immigrants just landed on the wharf ? 
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much 

as the well-off, just as much as you. 
Each has his or her place in the procession. 



The 
Sacred- 
ness of 
the Indi- 
vidual 



(All is a procession, 

The universe is a procession with measured 
and perfect motion.) 



Do you know so much yourself that you call 
the slave or the dull-face ignorant ? 

Do you suppose you have a right to a good 
sight, and he or she has no right to a 
sight ? 

Do you think matter has cohered together 
from its diffuse float and the soil is on the 
surface, and water runs and vegetation 
sprouts. 

For you only, and not for him and her? 

Children of Adam, 



Each of 
us Inev- 
itable 
and 
Limit- 
less 



ALL you continentals of Asia, Africa, Eu- 
rope, Australia, indifferent of place! 

All you on the numberless islands of the archi- 
pelagoes of the sea ! 

And you of centuries hence when you listen 
to me! 

And you each and everywhere whom I specify 
not, but include just the same! 

Health to you! Good will to you all, from me 
and America sent! 



Each of us inevitable, 

Each of us limitless — each of us with his or 

her right upon the earth, 
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the 

earth. 
Each of us here as divinely as any is here. 

Salut au Monde. 



Under- 
neath all 
Individ- 
uals 



UNDERNEATH all, individuals, 
I swear nothing is good to me now 
that ignores individuals. 
The American compact is altogether with in- 
dividuals. 



The only government is that which makes 
minute of individuals, 

The whole theory of the universe is directed 
unerringly to one single individual — name- 
ly to You. 

By Blue Ontario^ s Shore, 



you 



YOU Hottentot with clicking palate ! 
woolly-hair'd hordes! 
You own'd persons dropping sweat-drops or 

blood-drops! 
You human forms with the fathomless ever- 
impressive countenances of brutes! 
I dare not refuse you — the scope of the 
world, and of time and space, are upon me. 



Latent 
Poten- 
tialities 



You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest 
look down upon for all your glimmering 
language and spirituality! 

You CafFre, Berber, Soudanese! 

You haggard, uncouth, untutor'd Bedowee! 

You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, 
Kaubul, Cairo! 

You bather bathing in the Ganges! 



You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you 

Patagonian! you Fejee-man! 
I do not prefer others so very much before you 

either, 
I do not say one word against you, away back 

there where you stand, 
(You will come forward in due time to my 

side). Salut au Monde, 



The De- 
velop- 
ment of 
the In- 
dividual 



SAUNTERING the pavement thus, or 
crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces and 
faces and faces, 
I see them and complain not, and am content 
with all. 



Do you suppose I could be content with all if 
I thought them their own finale ? 

This now is too lamentable a face for a 

man. 
Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing 

for it, 
Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets 

it wrig to its hole. 



10 



This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, ^^^®^ 
Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant 
threat. 

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic 

sea, 
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as 

they go. 

This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, 
they need no label. 

And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caout- 
chouc, or hog's-lard. 

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest 

fee, 
An unceasing death-bell tolls there. 

Features of my equals would you trick me 

with your creas'd and cadaverous march ? 
Well, you cannot trick me. 

I see your rounded never-erased flow, 
I see 'neath the rims of your haggard and 
mean disguises. 

II 



Person- 
al Evo- 
lution 



Splay and twist as you like, poke with the 

tanghng fores of fishes or rats, 
You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will. 

I saw the face of the most smear'd and slob- 
bering idiot they had at the asylum, 

And I knew for my consolation what they 
knew not, 

I knew of the agents that emptied and broke 
my brother. 

The same wait to clear the rubbish from the 
fallen tenement. 

And I shall look again in a score or two of 
ages, 

And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and 
unharm'd, every inch as good as myself. 

_i__i_ Faces. 



I 



I 



AM an acme of things accomplish'd, and 
I an encloser of things to be. 



My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs. 
On every step bunches of ages, and larger 

bunches between the steps. 
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and 

mount. 



X2 



Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, afEvo- 
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know lution 

I was even there, 
I waited unseen and always, and slept through 

the lethargic mist, 
And took my time, and took no hurt from the 

fetid carbon. 

Long I was hugg'd close — long and long. 

Immense have been the preparations for me. 
Faithful and friendly the arms that have 
help'd me. 

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing 

like cheerful boatmen, 
For room to me stars kept aside in their own 

rings, 
They sent influences to look after what was to 

hold me. 

Before I was born out of my mother genera- 
tions guided me, 

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing 
could overlay it. 

13 



The 
Talk of 
the Be- 
ginning 
and the 
End 



For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their 
mouths and deposited it with care. 

All forces have been steadily employed to 

complete and delight me, 
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. 

Song of Myself, 

—i"i — 

I HAVE heard what the talkers were talk- 
ing, the talk of the beginning and the 
end. 
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. 

There was never any more inception than 

there is now. 
Nor any more youth or age than there is now, 
And will never be any more perfection than 

there is now. 
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. 

Urge and urge and urge, 

Always the procreant urge of the world. 



14 



Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, 
always substance and increase, always sex. 

Always a knit of identity, always distinction, 
always a breed of life. 

Song of Myself^ p. 30. 

OTHE joy of a manly self-hood! 
Personality — to be servile to none, to 
defer to none, not to any tyrant known or 
unknown. 
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy 

and elastic. 
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, 
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of 

a broad chest. 
To confront with your personality all the other 
personalities of the earth. 

_«j, 4_ A Song of Joys. 

THE earth is not an echo, man and his Hfe 
and all the things of his life are well- 
consider'd. 

You are not thrown to the winds, you gather 

certainly and safely around yourself. 
Yourself! yourself! yourself, for ever and ever! 



The Joy 
of a 
Manly 
Self- 
hood 



The 

Immor- 
tality 
of the 
Individ- 
ual 



15 



It is not to diffuse you that you were born of 

your mother and father, it is to identify 

you, 
It is not that you should be undecided, but 

that you should be decided. 
Something long preparing and formless is 

arrived and form'd in you, 
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes 

or goes. 

To Think of Time. 



Every- 
thing 
Tallied 
in the 
Individ- 
ual 



LIST close my scholars dear, 
-y All doctrines, all politics and civiliza- 
tion exurge from you. 

All sculpture and monuments and anything 
inscribed anywhere are tallied in you. 

The gist of histories and statistics as far back 
as the records reach is in you this hour, and 
myths and tales the same. 

If you were not breathing and walking here, 
where would they all be ? 

The most renown'd poems would be ashes, 
orations and plays would be vacuums. 



i6 



All architecture is what you do to it when you 
look upon it, 

(Did you think it was in the white or gray 
stone ? or the lines of the arches and cor- 
nices ?) 

All music is what awakes from you when you 
are reminded by the instruments, 

It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not 
the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the 
score of the baritone singer singing his sweet 
romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor 
that of the women's chorus, 

It is nearer and farther than they. 

A Song for Occupations. 



I OPEN my scuttle at night and see the far- 
sprinkled systems. 
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher 
edge but the rim of the farther systems. 

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, 

always expanding. 
Outward and outward and forever outward. 



Infinity 
and 

Eternity 
for Me 



17 



Infinity 

and 

Eternity 



My sun has his sun and round him obediently 

wheels, 
He joins with his partners a group of superior 

circuit, 
And greater sets follow, making specks of the 

greatest inside them. 



There is no stoppage and never can be stop- 
page, 

If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or 
upon their surfaces, were this moment re- 
duced back to a pallid float, it would not 
avail in the long run, 

We should surely bring up again where we now 
stand. 

And surely go as much farther, and then far- 
ther and farther. 



A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of 
cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or 
make it impatient, 

They are but parts, any thing is but a 
part. 



i8 



See ever so far, there is limitless space outside 

of that, 
Count ever so much, there is limitless time 

around that. 



My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain. 
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on 

perfect terms. 
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom 

I pine will be there. 

Song of Myself, 



T 



HIS day before dawn I ascended a hill Aspira- 
and look'd at the crowded heaven, 



And I said to my Spirit, When we become the 
enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and 
knowledge of everything in them, shall we 
be fiird and satisfied then? 

And my spirit said iVo, we but level that lift to 
pass and continue beyond. 

Song of Myself, 



19 



11 



II. DEMOCRACY 



Endless unfolding of words of ages! 

And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse. 



THE purpose of democracy — supplanting 
old belief in the necessary absoluteness 
of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, 
ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the 
only security against chaos, crime, and igno- 
rance — is, through many transmigrations and 
amid endless ridicules, arguments, and osten- 
sible failures, to illustrate, at all hazards, this 
doctrine or theory that man, properly train'd 
in sanest, highest freedom, may and must be- 
come a law, and series of laws, unto himself, 
surrounding and providing for, not only his 
own personal control, but all his relations to 
other individuals, and to the State; and that, 
while other theories, as in the past histories of 
nations, have proved wise enough, and indis- 
pensable perhaps for their conditions, this^ as 
matters now stand in our civilized world, is 
the only scheme worth working from, as war- 
ranting results like those of Nature's laws, 
rehable, when once estabHsh'd, to carry on 
themselves. 

Democratic Vistas. 



The 

Purpose 
of De- 
mocracy 



23 



"Earth's 
Resume 
Entire " 



SAIL, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, 
Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present 
only. 

The Past is also stored in thee; 

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, 
not of thy v^estern continent alone. 

Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, 
is steadied by thy spars; 

With thee Time voyages in trust, the antece- 
dent nations sink or sw^im v^ith thee. 

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, he- 
roes, epics, w^ars, thou bear'st the other con- 
tinents. 

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destina- 
tion-port triumphant; 

Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary 
eye O helmsman, thou earnest great com- 
panions. 

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee, 

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood. 



Demo- 
cratic 
Art 



I SAY that democracy can never prove it- 
self beyond cavil, until it founds and lux- 
uriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, 



24 



schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or r>emo 



cratic 



that has been produced anywhere in the past. Art 
under opposite influences. It is curious to me 
that while so many voices, pens, minds, in the 
press, lecture-rooms, in our Congress, etc., are 
discussing intellectual topics, pecuniary dan- 
gers, legislative problems, the suffrage, tarifli^ 
and labor questions, and the various business 
and benevolent needs of America, with prop- 
ositions, remedies, often worth deep attention, 
there is one need, a hiatus, and the profound- 
est, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to 
state. Our fundamental want to-day in the 
United States, with closest, amplest reference 
to present conditions, and to the future, is of a 
class, and the clear idea of a class, of native 
authors, literatuses, far different, far higher in 
grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern, 
fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeat- 
ing the whole mass of American mentality, 
j taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of 
life, giving it decision, affecting politics far 
more than the popular superficial suffrage, 
with results inside and underneath the elec- 
tions of Presidents or Congresses — radia- 

25 



ting, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, 
manners, and, as its grandest result, accom- 
plishing (what neither the schools nor the 
churches and their clergy have hitherto ac- 
complish'd, and without which this nation will 
no more stand, permanently, soundly, than a 
house will stand without a substratum) a 
religious and moral character beneath the po- 
litical and productive and intellectual bases of 
the States. For know you not, dear earnest 
readers, that the people of our land may all 
know how to read and write, and may all pos- 
sess the right to vote and yet the main things 
may be entirely lacking ? 

Democratic Vistas. 



The 
Influ- 
ences 
which 
Stamp 
History 



TO the ostent of the senses and eyes, I 
know, the influences which stamp the 
world's history are wars, uprisings or down- 
falls of dynasties, changeful movements of 
trade, important inventions, navigation, mili- 
tary or ciyil governments, advent of power- 
ful personalities, conquerors, etc. These of 
course play their part; yet, it may be, a single 
new thought, imagination, principle, even 



26 



literary style, fit for the time, put in shape by 
some great hteratus, and projected among 
mankind, may duly cause changes, growths, 
removals, greater than the longest and blood- 
iest war, or the most stupendous merely polit- 
ical, dynastic, or commercial overturn. 

—i"i— Democratic Vistas, 

NOTHING is plainer than the need, a long 
period to come, of a fusion of the States 
into the only reliable identity, the mortal and 
artistic one. For, I say, the true nationality 
of the States, the genuine union, when we come 
to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after all, 
neither the written law nor, (as is generally 
supposed,) either self-interest, or common 
pecuniary or material objects — but the fervid 
and tremendous Idea, melting everything else 
with resistless heat, and solving all lesser and 
definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, 
emotional power. ^ f,^-. Democratic Vistas, 

THE Americans of all nations at any time 
upon the earth, have probably the fullest 
poetical nature. The United States them- 
selves are essentially the greatest poem. In 



'*The 
Fervid 
and 

Tremen- 
dous 
Idea" 



"The 

United 

States 

Essen- 

tiailythe 

Greatest 

Poem " 



27 



The 

United 

States 



the history of the earth hitherto, the largest 
and most stirring appear tame and orderly to 
their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last 
is something in the doings of man that corre- 
sponds with the broadcast doings of the day 
and night. Here is not merely a nation but 
a teeming nation of nations. Here is action 
untied from strings, necessarily blind to par- 
ticulars and details, magnificently moving in 
vast masses. Here is the hospitality which 
forever indicates heroes. Here the perform- 
ance, disdaining the trivial, unapproach'd in 
the tremendous audacity of its crowds and 
groupings, and the push of its perspective, 
spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, 
and showers its prolific and splendid extrava- 
gance. One sees it must indeed own the 
riches of the summer and winter, and need 
never be bankrupt while corn grows from the 
ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the 
bays contain fish, or men beget children upon 
women. 

Preface, 1 855. 



28 



As if in some colossal drama, acted again 
like those of old under the open sun, the 
Nations of our time, and all the characteristics 
of Civilization, seem hurrying, stalking across, 
flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing 
up, toward some long-prepar'd, most tremen- 
dous denouement. Not to conclude the in- 
finite scenas of the race's life and toil and hap- 
piness and sorrow but haply that the boards 
be clear'd from oldest, worst incumbrances, 
accumulations, and Man resume the eternal 
play anew, and under happier, freer auspices. 
To me, the United States are important be- 
cause in this colossal drama they are unques- 
tionably designated for the leading parts for 
many a century to come. In them history and 
humanity seem to culminate. Our broad 
areas are even now the busy theatre of plots, 
passions, interests, and suspended problems 
compared to which the intrigues of the past of 
Europe . . . and even the development of 
peoples, as hitherto, exhibit scales of meas- 
urement comparatively narrow and trivial. 
And on these areas of ours, as on a stage, soon- 
er or later, something like an eclaircissement of 



The 
Role of 

the 

United 
States 
in the 
Univer- 
sal 
Drama 



29 



all the past civilization of Europe and Asia is 
probably to be evolved. 

Preface^ 1872. 



"The 
Modern 
Compos- 
ite Na- 
tion" 



N 



OT to be acted, emulated here, by us 
again, that role till now foremost in 
history — not to become a conqueror nation, or 
to achieve the glory of mere military, or diplo- 
matic, or commercial superiority — but to be- 
come the grand producing land of nobler 
men and women — of copious races, cheerful, 
healthy, tolerant, free — to become the most 
friendly nation (the United States indeed) — 
the modern composite nation, form'd from all, 
with room for all, welcoming all immigrants — 
accepting the work of our own interior de- 
velopment, as the work fitly filling ages and 
ages to come; — the leading nation of peace, 
but neither ignorant nor incapable of being 
the leading nation of war; — not the man's 
nation only, but the woman's nation — a land 
of splendid mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. 

Preface^ 1872. 



30 



LO ! where arise three peerless stars 
^ To be thy natal stars, my country — En- 
semble — Evolution — Freedom, 
Set in the sky of Law. 

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood, 



BUT sternly discarding, shutting our eyes 
to the glow and grandeur of the gen- 
eral effect, coming down to what is of the 
only real importance, Personalities, and ex- 
amining minutely, we question, we ask, Are 
there, indeed, men here worthy the name r 
Are there athletes ? Are there perfect women, 
to match the generous material luxuriance? 
Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful 
manners ? Are there crops of fine youths, and 
majestic old persons ? Are there arts worthy 
freedom and a rich people ? Is there a great 
moral and religious civilization — the only 
justification of a great material one ? 

Democratic Vistas, 



Natal 
stars 



The 
Impor- 
tance of 
the In- 
dividual 



31 



A Great 
City 



What do you think endures ? 

Do you think a great city endures ? 

Or a teeming manufacturing State ? or a pre- 
pared constitution ? or the best built steam- 
ships ? 

Or hotels of granite and iron ? or any chef- 
d'ceuvres of engineering, forts, armaments ? 

Away! these are not to be cherish'd for them- 
selves, 

They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the 
musicians play for them. 

The show passes, all does well enough of 
course. 

All does very well till one flash of defiance. 

The great city is that which has the greatest 

men and women. 
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest 

city in the whole world. 

Song of the Broad-Axe, 



The 
Real 
Man of 
Divine 
Essence 



FOR after the rest is said — after the many 
time-honor'd and really true things for 
subordination, experience, rights of property. 



32 



etc., have been listen'd to and acquiesced in — 
after the valuable and well-settled statement 
of our duties and relations in society is thor- 
oughly conn'd over and exhausted — it re- 
mains to bring forward and modify everything 
else with the idea of that something a man is 
(last precious consolation of the drudging 
poor), standing apart from all else, divine in 
his own right, and a woman in hers, sole and 
untouchable by any canons of authority or any 
rule derived from precedent. State-safety, the 
acts of legislatures, or even from what is called 
religion, modesty, or art. 

Democratic Vistas, 



THE genius of the United States is not best 
or most in its executives or legislatures, 
nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges 
or churches or parlors, nor even in its news- 
papers or inventors — but always most in the 
common people. . . . The largeness of the 
nation, however, were monstrous without a 
corresponding largeness and generosity of 
the spirit of the citizen. Not Nature nor 



The 
Genius 
of the 
United 
States 



33 



swarming states, nor streets and steamships, 
nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor cap- 
ital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of 
man — nor suffice the poet. No reminis- 
cences may suffice either. A live nation can 
always cut a deep mark, and can have the 
best authority the cheapest — namely, from its 
own soul. . . . The pride of the United States 
leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and 
all returns of commerce and agriculture, and 
all the magnitude of geography and shows of 
exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realiza- 
tion of full-sized men, or one full-sized man 
unconquerable and simple. 

^^ Preface, 1855. 



"What 
Christ 
Appear- 
ed For" 



WHAT Christ appear'd for in the moral- 
spiritual field for human-kind, namely, 
that in respect to the absolute soul, there is 
in the possession of such by each single indi- 
vidual, something so transcendent, so inca- 
pable of gradations (like life,) that, to that ex- 
tent, it places all beings on a common level, 
utterly regardless of the distinctions of intel- 
lect, virtue, station, or any height or lowliness 



34 



whatever — is tallied in like manner, in this 
other field, by democracy's rule that men, the 
nation, as a common aggregate of living iden- 
tities, affording in each a separate and com- 
plete subject for freedom, worldly thrift and 
happiness, and for a fair chance for growth, 
and for protection in citizenship, etc., must, to 
the political extent of the suffrage or vote, if no 
further, be placed, in each and in the whole, on 
one broad, primary, universal, common plat- 
form. Democratic Vistas, 



WE do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it 
either on the ground that the People, 
the masses, even the best of them, are, in their 
latent or exhibited qualities, essentially sen- 
sible and good — nor on the ground of their 
rights; but that good or bad, rights or no 
rights, the democratic formula is the only safe 
and preservative one for coming times. We 
endow the masses with the suffrage for their 
own sake, no doubt; then, perhaps still more, 
from another point of view, for community's 
sake. Leaving the rest to the sentimentalists, 
we present freedom as sufficient in its scien- 



The 
Only 
Safe 
Formu- 
la 



35 



tific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, 
clear and passionless as crystal. 

Democratic Vistas, 



The 
People 



THE People! Like our huge earth itself, 
which, to ordinary scansion, is full of vul- 
gar contradiction and offence, man, viev^ed in 
the lump, displeases, and is a constant puzzle 
and affront to the merely educated classes. 
The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with the 
Infinite, alone confronts his manifold and 
oceanic qualities — but taste, intelHgence and 
culture (so-called,) have been against the 
masses, and remain so. There is plenty of 
glamour about the most damnable crimes and 
hoggish meannesses, special and general, of 
the feudal and dynastic world over there, with 
its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so 
well-dress'd and so handsome. But the Peo- 
ple are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins 
gaunt and ill-bred. 

Democratic Vistas. 



36 



LITERATURE, strictly consider'd, has 
-y never recognized the People, and, what- 
ever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking 
generally, the tendencies of literature, as hither- 
to pursued, have been to make mostly critical 
and querulous men. It seems as if, so far, 
there v^ere some natural repugnance between 
a literary and professional life, and the rude 
rank spirit of the democracies. There is, in 
later literature, a treatment of benevolence, a 
charity business, rife enough it is true; but I 
know nothing more rare, even in this country, 
than a fit scientific estimate and reverent ap- 
preciation of the People — of their measure- 
less wealth of latent power and capacity, their 
vast, artistic contrasts of Hghts and shades — 
with, in America, their entire reliability in 
emergencies, and a certain breadth of historic 
grandeur, of peace or war, far surpassing all 
the vaulted samples of book-heroes, or any 
haut ton coteries, in all the records of the 
world. 

Democratic Vistas, 



Litera- 
ture has 
never 
Recog- 
nized 
the 
People 



37 



The 

Mission 
of Gov- 
ernment 



I SAY the mission of government, hence- 
forth in civiHzed lands, is not repression 
alone, and not authority alone, not even of 
law, nor by that favorite standard of the 
eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the 
born heroes and captains of the race, (as if 
such ever, or one time out of a hundred, get 
into the big places, elective or dynastic) — 
but higher than the highest arbitrary rule, 
to train communities through all their grades, 
beginning with individuals and ending there 

again, to rule themselves. 

Democratic Vistas. 



Where 

the 

Great 

City 

Stands 



THE place where the great city stands is 
not the place of stretch'd wharves, docks, 
manufactures, deposits of produce. 

Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new- 
comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing, 

Nor the place of the tallest and costliest build- 
ings or shops selling goods from the rest of 
the earth. 

Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, 
nor the place where money is plentiest. 

Nor the place of the most numerous population. 



38 



Where the city stands with the brawniest The 

111 Great 

breed or orators and bards, city 

Where the city stands that is belov'd by these, 

and loves them in return and understands 

them, 
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in 

the common words and deeds. 
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in 

its place, 
Where the men and women think lightly of 

the laws, 
Where the slave ceases, and the master of 

slaves ceases. 
Where the populace rise at once against the 

never-ending audacity of elected persons, 
Where fierce men and women pour forth as 

the sea to the whistle of death pours its 

sweeping and unript waves. 
Where outside authority enters always after 

the precedence of inside authority. 
Where the citizen is always the head and 

ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor, and 

what not, are agents for pay, 
Where children are taught to be laws to them- 
selves, and to depend on themselves, 

39 



Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs, 
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged, 
Where women walk in public processions in 

the streets the same as the men. 
Where they enter the public assembly and 

take places the same as the men; 
Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands. 
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes 

stands, 
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands. 
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers 

stands. 
There the great city stands. 

Song of the Broad-Axe, 



America 
To-day 
a Seeth- 
ing 

Mass of 
Mate- 
rials 



OUR America to-day I consider in many 
respects as but indeed a vast seething 
mass of materials y ampler, better, (worse also,) 
than previously known — eligible to be used 
to carry towards its crowning stage, and build 
for good, the great ideal nationality of the 
future, the nation of the body and the soul, — 
no limit here to land, help, opportunities, 
mines, products, demands, suppHes, etc.; — 



40 



with (I think) our political organization, Na- 
tional, State, and Municipal, permanently 
establish'd, as far ahead as we can calculate — 
but, so far, no social, literary, religious, or 
esthetic organizations, consistent with our 
politics, or becoming to us — which organiza- 
tions can only come, in time, through native 
; schools or teachers of great democratic ideas, 
religion — through science, which now, like a 
new sunrise, ascending, begins to illuminate 
all — and through * our own begotten poets 
and literatuses. 

Preface^ 1872. 



LAND tolerating all — accepting all — not 
^ for the good alone — all good for thee; 
Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto 

thyself; 
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thy- 
self. 



Not for success alone 

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always; 

41 



«*Land 
Tolerat- 
ing AU" 



The storm shall dash thy face — the murk 
of war, and worse than war, shall cover thee 
all over; 



But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, 
and surmount them all. 

Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood, 



The 

Value of 
Politics 



TO practically enter into politics is an 
important part of American personal- 
ism. . . . It is the fashion among dilettants and 
fops to decry the whole formulation of the ac- 
tive politics of America, as beyond redemption, 
and to be carefully kept away from. See you 
that you do not fall into this error. America, 
it may be, is doing very well upon the whole, 
notwithstanding these antics of the parties and 
their leaders, these half-brain'd nominees, the 
many ignorant ballots, and many elected fail- 
ures and blatherers. It is the dilletants, and 
all who shirk their duty, who are not doing 
well. As for you, I advise you to enter more 
strongly yet into politics. I advise every 



42 



^ 



young man to do so. Always inform your- 
self; always do the best you can; always vote. 

Democratic Vistas, 

DISENGAGE yourself from parties. The 
They have been useful, and to some Parties 
extent remain so; but the floating, uncom- 
mitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics, 
the masters of parties — watching aloof, in- 
clining victory this side or that side — such 
are the ones most needed, present and future. 
For America, if eligible at all to downfall and 
ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for 
I see clearly that the combined foreign world 
could not beat her down. But these savage, 
wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but 
their own will, more and more combative, less 
and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of 
equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of the 
States, the ever-overarching American ideas, 
it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly 
to no party, nor submit blindly to their dic- 
tators, but steadily hold yourself judge and 
master over all of them. 

Democratic Vistas, 



43 



Faith in 
Democ- 
racy 



FAITH IS the antiseptic of the soul — it 
pervades the common people and pre- 
serves them — they never give up believing 
and expecting and trusting. There is that 
indescribable freshness and unconsciousness 
about an illiterate person, that humbles and 
mocks the pov^er of the noblest expressive 
genius. The poet sees for a certainty hov^ 
one not a great artist may be just as sacred and 
perfect as the greatest artist. Preface^ I^SS- 



Democ- 
racy is 
Law 



DEMOCRACY too is law, and of the 
strictest, amplest kind. Many suppose, 
(and often in its own ranks the error,) that it 
means a throwing aside of law, and running 
riot. But, briefly, it is the superior law, not 
alone that of physical force, the body, which, 
adding to, it supersedes with that of the spirit. 
Law is the unshakable order of the universe 
forever; and the law over all, and law of laws, 
is the law of successions; that of the superior 
law, in time, gradually supplanting and over- 
whelming the inferior one. (While, for my- 
self, I would cheerfully agree — first covenant- 
ing that the formative tendencies shall be 



44 



^ 



administer'd in favor, or at least not against it, 
and that this reservation be closely construed 
— that until the individual or community 
show due signs, or be so minor and fractional 
as not to endanger the State, the condition of 
authoritative tutelage may continue, and self- 
government must abide its time.) Nor is the 
esthetic point, always an important one, with- 
out fascination for highest aiming souls. The 
common ambition strains for elevations, to 
become some privileged exclusive. The mas- 
ter sees greatness and health in being part 
of the mass; nothing will do as well as common 
ground. Would you have in yourself the 
divine, vast, general law ? Then merge your- 
self in it. Democratic Vistas, 



THE great master has nothing to do with 
miracles. He sees health for himself in 
being one of the mass — he sees the hiatus in 
singular eminence. To the perfect shape 
comes common ground. To be under the 
general law is great, for that is to correspond 
with it. The master knows that he is un- 



Solidar- 
ity 



45 



Centrif- 
ugal 
Forces 



speakably great, and that all are unspeakably 
great — that nothing, for instance, is greater 
than to conceive children, and bring them up 
well — that to be is just as great as to perceive 
or tell. _j. ^ Preface, 1 855. 

THE eager and often inconsiderate appeals 
of reformers and revolutionists are in- 
dispensable, to counterbalance the inertness 
and fossilism making so large a part of human 
institutions. The latter v^ill always take care 
of themselves — the danger being that they 
rapidly tend to ossify us. The former is to 
be treated with indulgence, and even with 
respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation 
and a plentiful degree of speculative license to 
political and moral sanity. 

Democratic Vistas, 



The 

Gravita- 
tion- 
hold of 
Prop- 
erty 



THE true gravitation-hold of Hberalism in 
the United States will be a more universal 
ownership of property, general homesteads, 
general comfort — a vast, intertwining reticula- 
tion of wealth. As the human frame, or, in- 
deed, any object in this manifold universe, is 



46 



best kept together by the simple miracle of its 
own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise and 
profit thereof, so a great and varied national- 
ity, occupying miUions of square miles, were 
firmest held and knit by the principle of the 
safety and endurance of the aggregate of its 
middling property owners. So that, from 
another point of view, ungracious as it may 
sound, and a paradox after what we have been 
saying, democracy looks with suspicious, ill- 
satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, 
and on those out of business. She asks for 
men and women with occupations, well-off, 
owners of houses and acres, and with cash in 
the bank — and with some cravings for liter- 
ature, too; and must have them, and hastens 
to make them. Democratic Vistas, 



AND, topping democracy, this most al- 
k luring record, that it alone can bind, and 
ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of how- 
ever various and distant lands, into a brother- 
hood, a family. It is the old, yet ever-modern 
dream of earth, out of her eldest and her 
youngest, her fond philosophers and poets. 



The 
Broth- 
erhood 
of Dem- 
ocracy 



47 



Not that half only, individualism, which 
isolates. There is another half, which is 
adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties and ag- 
gregrates, making the races comrades, and 
fraternizing all. Both are to be vitaKzed by 
religion, (sole worthiest elevator of man or 
State,) breathing into the proud, material 
tissues the breath of hfe. For I say at the core 
of democracy, finally, is the religious element. 
All the religions, old and new, are there. Nor 
may the scheme step forth, clothed in resplen- 
dent beauty and command, till these, bearing 
the best, the latest fruit, the spiritual, shall 
fully appear. Democratic Vistas. 



The 

Cement 
of Affec- 
tion 



IDREAM'D in a dream I saw a city in- 
vincible to the attacks of the whole of the 
rest of the earth; 
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends; 
Nothing was greater there than the quality 

of robust love, it led the rest; 
It was seen every hour in the actions of the 

men of that city. 
And in all their looks and words. 

Calamus. 



48 



Ill LOVE AND COMRADESHIP 



Camerado, I give you my hand! 

I give you my love more precious than money, 

I give you myself before preaching or law; 

Will you give me yourself? w^ill you come travel 

with me? 
Shall we stick by each other as long as we Hve ? 

Song of the Open Road, 



AND now gentlemen, 
,. A word I give to remain in your memo- 
ries and minds, 
As base and finale too for all metaphysics. 



The 

Base of 
all 

Meta- 
physics 



(So to the students the old professor. 
At the close of his crowded course.) 

Having studied the new and antique, the 
Greek and Germanic systems, 

Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and 
Schelling and Hegel, 

Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater 
than Plato, 

And greater than Socrates sought and stated, 
Christ divine having studied long, 

I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Ger- 
manic systems. 

See the philosophies all. Christian churches 
and tenets see. 

Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and un- 
derneath Christ the divine I see. 

The dear love of man for his comrade, the 
attraction of friend to friend, 



51 



Of the well-married husband and wife, of 

children and parents, 
Of city for city, and land for land. 

Calamus. 



"I sing 
the Body 
Elec- 
tric" 



I SING the body electric, 
The armies of those I love engirth me 
and I engirth them; 
They will not let me off till I go with them, 

respond to them. 
And discorrupt them, and charge them full 
with the charge of the soul. 



Was It doubted that those who corrupt their 

own bodies conceal themselves ? 
And if those who defile the living are as bad 

as they who defile the dead ? 
And if the body does not do as much as the 

soul ? 
And if the body were not the soul, what is the 

soul \ 

Children of Adam. 



52 



THE love of the body of man or woman 
balks account, the body itself balks ac- 
count; 
That of the male is perfect, and that of the 
female is perfect. 



The 

Expres- 
sion of 
the Body 



The expression of the face balks account. 
But the expression of a well-made man ap- 
pears not only in his face, 
It is in his Hmbs and joints also: it is curiously 

in the joints of his hips and wrists. 
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the 

flex of his waist and knees; dress does not 

hide him. 
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through 

the cotton and flannel. 
To see him pass conveys as much as the best 

poem, perhaps more. 
You linger to see his back, and the back of his 

neck and shoulder-side. 

Children of Adam. 



53 



"This 
is the 
Female 
Form" 



THIS is the female form, 
A divine nimbus exhales from it from 

head to foot, 
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction. 
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more 

than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but 

myself and it; 
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and 

solid earth, the atmosphere and the clouds, 

and what was expected of heaven or fear'd 

of hell, are now consumed; 
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out 

of it — the response likewise ungovernable; 



Bridegroom night of love, working surely and 

softly into the prostrate dawn; 
Undulating into the willing and yielding day. 
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet 

flesh'd day. Children of Adam, 



"Das 
Ewig 
Weib- 
liche" 



BE not ashamed, women — your privilege 
encloses the rest and is the exit of the rest. 
You are the gates of the body, and you are the 
gates of the soul. 



54 



The female contains all qualities, and tem- 
pers them — she is in her place, and moves 
with perfect balance. 

• • • • • 

As I see my soul reflected in nature; 

As I see through a mist, one with inexpressible 

completeness and beauty, 
See the bent head, and arms folded over the 

breast — the female I see. 

Children of Adam, 

BEHOLD a woman! 
She looks out from her Quaker-cap — 
her face is clearer and more beautiful than 
the sky. 

She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded 

porch of the farmhouse. 
The sun just shines on her old white head. 

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen: 
Her grandsons raised the flax and her grand- 
daughters spun it with the distaff^ and the 
wheel. 



"The 
Justified 
Mother 
of Men" 



55 



The melodious character of the earth, 

The finish beyond which philosophy cannot 

go, and does not wish to go, 
The justified mother of men. 

Faces. 



"The 
Full- 
spread 
Pride of 
a Man" 



THE male is not less the soul nor more, he 
too is in his place, 

He too is all qualities, he is action and 
power; 

The flush of the known universe is in him; 

Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and de- 
fiance become him well. 

The wildest, largest passions, bHss that is ut- 
most, sorrow that is utmost, become him 
well; pride is for him. 

The full-spread pride of man is calming and 
excellent to the soul; 

Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always; 
he brings everything to the test of himself. 

Children of Adam, 



56 



A 



MAN'S body at auction, 
I help the auctioneer — the sloven does 
not half know his business. 



Gentlemen, look on this wonder! 

Whatever the bids of the bidders, they can- 
not be high enough for it; 

For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of 
years, without one animal or plant; 

For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily 
roird. 



Fathers 

of 

Fathers 

and 

Mothers 

of 

Mothers 



This is not only one man, this the father of 
those who shall be fathers in their turns; 

In him the start of populous states and rich 
repubHcs, 

Of him countless immortal lives with count- 
less embodiments and enjoyments. 

How do you know who shall come from the 
offspring of his offspring through the cen- 
turies ? 

(Who might you find you have come from 
yourself, if you could trace back through 
the centuries ?) 



57 



A woman's body at auction. 

She too is not only herself, she is the teeming 

mother of mothers; 
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and 

be mates to the mothers. 

Children of Adam, 



II 



The 

Need for 
Perfect 
Women 



UNFOLDED out of the folds of the 
woman's brain, 
Come all the folds of the man's brain duly 

obedient; 
Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all 

justice is unfolded; 
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman 

is all sympathy; 
A man is a great thing upon the earth, and 
through eternity — but every jot of the 
greatness of man is unfolded out of woman. 
Unfolded out of the Folds, 



I 



The 
Sacred- 
ness of 
the 
Body 



IF anything is sacred the human body is 
sacred, 
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token 
of manhood untainted; 



58 



•1 



And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm- 
fibred body is more beautiful that the most 
beautiful face. 

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own 
live body? or the fool that corrupted her 
own live body ? 

For thev do not conceal themselves, and cannot 
conceal themselves. 

my body! I dare not desert the Hkes of you 
in other men and women, nor the hkes of 
the parts of you; 

1 believe the likes of you are to stand or fall 
with the likes of the soul, (and that they are 
the soul). 

Children o^ Adam, 



s 



EX contains all. The 



delicacies, results, promulgations. 
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals. 
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of 
the earth, 



Mean- 



Bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, ingsof 



Sex 



59 



Love the 
Pulse of 
AU 



All the governments, judges, gods, foUow'd 

persons of the earth — 
These are contain'd in sex as parts of itself 

and justifications of itself. 

Children of Adam, 

BLOW again trumpeter! and for thy 
theme 
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the sol- 
vent and the setting. 
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and 

the pang. 
The heart of man and woman all for love. 
No other theme but love — knitting, enclos- 
ing, all-diffusing love. 

how the immortal phantoms crowd around 
me! 

1 see the vast alembic ever working, I see and 

know the flames that heat the world, 
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of 

lovers. 
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, 

dark, and nigh to death; 
_ 



i 



Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, 

that mocks time and space. 
Love, that is day and night — love, that is 

sun and moon and stars. 
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with 

perfume. 
No other words but words of love, no other 

thought but love. 

The Mystic Trumpeter, 



ONE hour to madness and joy! The 

O furious ! O confine me not ! ness of 

(What is this that frees me so in storms ? 
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging 
winds mean ?) 



O something improved! Something in a 

trance! 
O madness amorous! O trembling! 
O to escape utterly from others' anchors and 

holds 
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless 

and dangerous! 

6i 



Love 



The 
Attrac- 
tion of 
Affinity 



To court destruction with taunts — with invi- 
tations ! 

To ascend — to leap to the heavens of the love 
indicated to me! 

To rise thither with my inebriate Soul! 

To be lost, if it must be so I 

To feed the remainder of life with one hour 
of fulness and freedom! 

With one brief hour of madness and joy. 

Children of Adam, 

OUT of the rolling ocean, the crowd, 
came a drop gently to me. 
Whispering, / love you, before long I die; 
I have traveled a long way, merely to look on 

you, to touch you, 
For I could not die till I once looked on yoUy 
For I feard I might afterward lose you. 



(Now we have met, we have look'd, we are 

safe; 
Return in peace to the ocean, my love; 
I too am part of that ocean, my love — ^we are 

not so much separated; 



62 



Behold the great rondure — the cohesion of all, 
how perfect ! 

But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to 
separate us, 

As for an hour carrying us diverse — ^yet can- 
not carry us diverse forever; 

Be not impatient — a little space — know you, I 
salute the air, the ocean, and the land 

Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, 
my love.) 

Children of Adam, 



I HEARD you solemn-sweet pipes of the Remi- 
organ as last Sunday morn I pass'd the cences 
church; 
Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at 
dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up 
above so mournful; 
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the 
opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of 
the quartet singing; 
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring 
low through one of the wrists around my 
head, 

_ 



The 
Safety 
of the 
Future 



Heard the pulse of you when all was still ring- 
ing little bells last night under my ear. 

Children of Adam, 

INTENSE and loving comradeship, the 
personal and passionate attachment of 
man to man — which, hard to define, underhes 
the lessons and ideals of the profound saviors 
of every land and age, and which seems to 
promise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated 
and recognized in manners and literature, the 
most substantial hope and safety of the future 
of these States, will then be fully express'd. 

Democratic Vistas, 



Com- 
panion- 
ship 



I WILL sing the song of companionship, 
I will show what alone must finally com- 
pact these; 
I believe these are to found their own ideal of 

manly love, indicating it in me. 
I will therefore let flame from me the burning 

fires that were threatening to consume me; 
I will lift what has too long kept down those 

smouldering fires, — 
I will give them complete abandonment. 



64 



I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and 

of love, 
For who but I should understand love with 

all its sorrow and joy ? 
And who but I should be the poet of comrades ? 

Starting from Paumanok, 



I HAVE perceiv'd that to be with those I 
hke is enough, 
To stop in company with the rest at evening 

is enough. 
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, 

breathing, laughing flesh is enough. 
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest 

my arm ever so lightly round his or her 

neck for a moment, what is this then ? 
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as 

in a sea. 



"To be 
with 
Those I 
Like" 



There is something in staying close to men and 
women and looking on them, and in the 
contact and odor of them, that pleases the 
soul well. 

All things please the soul, but these please the 
soul well. Children of Adam, 

_ 



The 
Adhe- 
sive 
Love in 
Democ- 
racy 



IT is to the development, identification, and 
general prevalence of that fervid comrade- 
ship, (the adhesive love, at least rivahng the 
amative love hitherto possessing imaginative 
literature, if not going beyond it,) that I look 
for the counterbalance and offset of our ma- 
teriahstic and vulgar American democracy, 
and for the spiritualization thereof. Many 
v^ill say it is a dream, and w^ill not follow my 
inferences: but I confidently expect a time 
when there will be seen, running like a half- 
hid warp through all the myriad audible and 
visible worldly interests of America, threads of 
manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and 
sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees 
hitherto unknown — not only giving tone to 
individual character, and making it unprece- 
dently emotional, muscular, heroic, and re- 
fined, but having the deepest relations to gen- 
eral politics. I say democracy infers such 
loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin 
or counterpart, without which it will be in- 
complete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuat- 
ing itself. 

Democratic Vistas, 



66 



racy I" 



COME, I Will make the continent mdis- "For 
, '. I You,0 

soluble, Democ- 

' itt 

I will make the most splendid race the sun 

ever shone upon, 
I will make divine magnetic lands. 
With the love of comrades. 

With the life-long love of comrades. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees 
along all the rivers of America, and along 
the shores of the great lakes, and all over 
the prairies. 
I will make inseparable cities with their arms 
about each other's necks. 

By the love of comrades, 

By the manly love of comrades. 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to 

serve you, ma femme! 
For you, for you I am trilling these songs. 
In the love of comrades. 

In the high-towering love of 
comrades. 

Calamus, 
- 



The 
Conso- 
lation of 
Affec- 
tion 



OF the terrible doubt of appearances, 
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may 
be deluded. 

That may-be reliance and hope are but spec- 
ulations after all. 

That may-be identity beyond the grave is a 
beautiful fable only. 

May-be the things I perceive, the animals, 
plants, men, hills, shining and flowing 
waters. 

The skies of day and night, colors, densities, 
forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they 
are) only apparitions, and the real some- 
thing has yet to be known. 



To me these and the like of these are curiously 
answer'd by my lovers, my dear friends. 

When he whom I love travels with me or sits 
a long while holding me by the hand. 

When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense 
that words and reason hold not, surround us 
and pervade us, 

Then I am charged with untold and untellable 
wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing 
further, * 



68 



I cannot answer the question of appearances 
or that of identity beyond the grave, 

But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied; 

He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied 
me. Calamus, 



IN my opinion it is by a fervent, accepted de- 
velopment of Comradeship, the beautiful 
and sane affection of man for man, latent in 
all the young fellows. North and South, East 
and West — it is by this, I say, and by what 
goes directly and indirectly alojig with it, that 
the United States of the future (I cannot too 
often repeat) are to be most effectually welded 
together, intercalated, anneal'd into a Living 
Union. Preface^ 1876. 



The 

Welding 
of the 
Nation 



I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing. 
All alone stood it and the moss hung 
down from the branches; 
Without any companion it grew there uttering 
joyous leaves of dark green. 



69 



The 
Yearn- 
ings of 
Solitude 



Solitude 



And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made 
me think of myself. 

But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous 
leaves standing alone there without its 
friend, its lover near, for I knew I could 



not; 



And I broke off a twig with a certain number 

of leaves upon it, and twined round it a little 

moss. 
And brought it away; and I have placed it in 

sight in my room. 
It is not needed to remind me as of my own 

dear friends, 
(For I beheve lately I think of little else than of 

them,) 
Yet it remains to me a curious token, It makes 

me think of manly love; 
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens 

there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat 

space, 
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a 

friend a lover near, 
I know very well I could not. 

Calamus. 



70 



MY spirit has pass'd in compassion and 
determination around the whole earth; 
I have look'd for equals and lovers and found 

them ready for me in all lands; 
I think some divine rapport has equalized me 
with them. Salut au Monde, 



Uni- 
versal 
Broth- 
erhood 



I ALSO sent out Leaves of Grass to arouse 
and set flowing in men's and women's 
hearts, young and old, (my present and future 
readers,) endless streams of living, pulsating 
love and friendship, directly from them to my- 
self, now and ever. To this terrible irre- 
pressible yearning, (surely more or less down 
underneath in most human souls,) — this 
never-satisfied appetite for sympathy, and this 
boundless offering of sympathy — this uni- 
versal democratic comradeship — this old 
eternal, yet ever-new interchange of adhesive- 
ness, so fitly emblematic of America — I have 
given in that book, undisguisedly, declaredly, 
the openest expression. Poetic literature has 
long been the formal and conventional tender 
of art and beauty merely, and of a narrow, con- 
stipated, special amativeness. I say the sub- 



A Vital 
Bond in 
Litera- 
ture 



71 



Invisible 
Com- 
munion 



tlest, sweetest, surest tie between me and Him 
or Her, who in the pages of Calamus and other 
pieces reaHzes me — though we never see 
each other, or though ages and ages hence — 
must, in their way, be personal affection. And 
those — be they few, or be they many — are at 
any rate my readers, in a sense that belongs 
not, and never can belong, to better, prouder 
poems. Preface, 1876. 

WHEN you read these I that was visible 
am become invisible. 
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my 

poems, seeking me. 
Fancying how happy you were if I could be 

with you and become your comrade; 
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too cer- 
tain but I am now with you.) 

Calamus, 



72 



■ 



IV. RELIGION 



Passage indeed O soul to primal thought, 

Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, 

The young maturity of brood and bloom, 

To realms of budding bibles. 

Passage to India,. 



WHEN I commenced, years ago, elabo- 
rating the plan of my poems . . . one 
deep purpose underlay the others, and has 
underlain it and its execution ever since — and 
that has been the religious purpose. . . . Not 
of course to exhibit itself in the old ways, as in 
writing hymns or psalms with an eye to the 
church pew, or to express conventional pietism, 
or the sickly yearnings of devotees, but in a new 
way, and aiming at the widest sub-bases and 
inclusions of humanity, and tallying the fresh 
air of sea and land. I will see, (said I to my- 
self,) whether there is not, for my purposes as 
poet, a religion, and a sound religious germe- 
nancy in the average human race . . . deeper 
and larger, and affording more profitable re- 
turns, than all mere sects or churches — as 
boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature itself — 
a germenancy that has too long been unen- 
couraged, unsung, almost unknown. 

With science, the old theology of the East, 
long in its dotage, begins evidently to die and 
disappear. But (to my mind) science — and 
may-be such will prove its principal service — 
as evidently prepares the way for One inde- 



The Re- 
ligious 
Purpose 
of 

Leaves 
of Grass 



75 



scribably grander — Time's young but per- 
fect offspring — the new theology-heir of the 
West — lusty and loving and wondrous beau- 
tiful. For America, and for to-day, just the 
same as any day, the supreme and final science 
is the science of God — what we call science 
being only its minister — as Democracy is, or 
shall be also. Preface^ 1872. 



After 

Reading 

Hegel 



ROAMING in thought over the Universe, 
I saw the little that is Good steadily 
hastening towards immortality. 
And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw has- 
tening to merge itself and become lost and 
dead. Roaming in Thought, 



The 
Eman- 
cipation 
of ReU- 
gion 



THE time has certainly come to begin to 
discharge the idea of religion . . . from 
mere ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and 
churches and church-going, and assign it to that 
general position, chiefest, most indispensable, 
most exhilarating, to which the others are to be 
adjusted, inside of all human character, and 
education, and affairs. ... It must be con- 



76 



sign'd henceforth to democracy en masse^ and 
to Hterature. It must enter into the poems of 
the nation. It must make the nation. 

Preface^ 1 872. 



EACH is not for its own sake, 
I say the whole earth and all the stars 
in the sky are for religion's sake. 



The 
Imma- 
nence of 
Religion 



I say no man has ever yet been half devout 
enough, 

None has ever yet adored or worshiped half 
enough. 

None has begun to think how divine he him- 
self is, and how certain the future is. 



I say that the real and permanent grandeur 
of these States must be their religion. 

Otherwise there is no real and permanent 
grandeur; 

(Nor character nor Hfe worthy the name 
without religion. 

Nor land nor man or woman without reli- 
gion.) Starting from Paumanok. 



77 



The 

Conflict 
of The- 
ology 
with 
Science 



NOTE, to-day, an instructive, curious spec- 
tacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its 
fields, of Democracy in its) — Science, testing 
absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already 
burst well upon the world — a sun, mounting, 
most illuminating, most glorious — surely 
never again to set. But against it, deeply en- 
trenched, holding possession, yet remains, (not 
only through the churches and schools, but by 
imaginative literature, and unregenerate poe- 
try,) the fossil theology of the mythic-mate- 
riahstic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, 
fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity. 

Democratic Vistas, 



A 

Child's 
Amaze 



SILENT and amazed even when a 
little boy, 
I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday 

put God in his statements, 
As contending against some being or influ- 
ence. A Child's Amaze. 



The 
Priest 
of the 
Futiire 



THERE will soon be no more priests. 
Their work is done. A new order shall 
arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and 



78 



r" 



every man shall be his own priest. They shall 
find their inspiration in real objects to-day, 
symptoms of the past and future. They shall 
not deign to defend immortality or God, or the 
perfection of things, or Hberty, or the exquisite 
beauty and reality of the soul. Preface^ i^SS- 

— I--;— 

I DO not despise you priests; 
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the 
least of faiths. 
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all 
between ancient and modern. 

Song of Myself, 

Magnifying and applying come I, 

Outbidding at the start the old cautious huck- 
sters, 

Taking myself the exact dimensions of Je- 
hovah, 

Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Her- 
cules his grandson. 

Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, 
Buddha, 

In my portfoKo placing Manito loose, Allah 
on a leaf, the crucifix engraved. 



All-in- 
clusive 
Faith 



The 
Divine 
Element 
in all 
Reli- 
gions 



79 



The Idea 
of God 



With Odin and the hideous-faced MexitH and 

every idol and image, 
Taking them all for what they are worth and 

not a cent more, 
Admitting they were alive and did the work of 

their days, 
(They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who 

have now to rise and fly and sing for them- 
selves,) 
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out 

better in myself, bestowing them freely on 

each man and woman I see. 

Song of Myself. 



N 



ND I say to mankind. Be not curious 
about God, 

For I who am curious about each am not cu- 
rious about God, 
(No array of terms can say how much I am 
at peace about God and about death.) 



I hear and behold God in every object, yet 

understand God not in the least. 
Nor do I understand who there can be more 

wonderful than myself. Song of Myself, 



80 



A STRONG fibred joyousness and faith, 
and the sense of health al fresco^ may 
well enter into the preparation of future noble 
American authorship. Part of the test of a 
great literatus shall be the absence in him of 
the idea of the covert, the lurid, the maleficent, 
the devil, the grim estimates inherited from 
the Puritans, hell, natural depravity, and the 
like. The great literatus will be known, 
among the rest, by his cheerful simplicity, his 
adherence to natural standards, his limitless 
faith in God, his reverence, and by the absence 
in him of doubt, ennui, burlesque, persiflage, or 
any strain'd and temporary fashion. 

Democratic Vistas, 

AH more than any priest, O soul, we too 
^ believe in God, 
But with the mystery of God we dare not 
dally. Passage to India. 

THE ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be 
looked for in the field of individuality, 
and is a result that no organization or church 
can ever achieve. As history is poorly retained 



8i 



Joyous- 
ness and 
Health 
in Re- 
ligion 



Adora- 
tion 



The 
Illumi- 
nation 
of the 
Individ- 
ual Soul 



by what the technists call history, and is not i| 
given out from their pages, except the learner ' 
has in himself the sense of the well-wrapt, 
never yet written, perhaps impossible to be 
written, history — so Religion, although casu- 
ally arrested, and, after a fashion, preserved in 
the churches and creeds, does not depend at 
all upon them, but is part of the identified 
soul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles 
in the old way, but in new ways — the identi- 
fied soul, which can really confront Religion 
when it extricates itself entirely from the 
churches, and not before. 

Democratic Vistas. 



CHANTING THE SQUARE DEIFIC 



The 

Reign of 
Law 



CHANTING the square deific, out of the 
One advancing, out of the sides, 
Out of the old and new, out of the square en- 
tirely divine. 
Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from 
this side Jehovah am I, 



82 



Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; 

Not Time affects me — I am Time, old, mod- 
ern as any, 

Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous 
judgments. 

As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kro- 
nos, with laws. 

Aged beyond computation, yet ever new, ever 
with those mighty laws rolling. 

Relentless I forgive no man — whoever sins 
dies — I will have that man's life; 

Therefore let none expect mercy — have the 
seasons, gravitation, the appointed days, 
mercy ? No more have I; 

But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all 
the appointed days that forgive not, 

I dispense from this side judgments inexor- 
able without the least remorse. 



CONSOLATOR most mild, the promis'd 
one advancing, 
With gentle hand extended, the mightier God 
am I; 



83 



The 
Conso- 
lation of 
Affec- 
tion 



Affec- 
tion 



Foretold by prophets and poets in their most 

rapt prophecies and poems, 
From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes — 

lo! Hermes I — lo! mine is Hercules' 

face; 
All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, ab- 
sorb in myself. 
Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put j.. 

in prison, and crucified, and many times II 

shall be again. 
All the world have I given up for my dear 

brothers' and sisters' sake, for the soul's 

sake. 
Wending my way through the homes of men, 

rich or poor, with the kiss of affection : 
For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing 

God, with hope and all-enclosing charity, 
(Conqueror yet — for before me all the 

armies and soldiers of the earth shall yet 

bow — and all the weapons of war become 

impotent:) 
With indulgent words as to children, with 

fresh and sane words, mine only. 
Young and strong I pass knowing well I am 

destin'd myself to an early death. 



84 



But my chanty has no death — my wisdom 
dies not, neither early nor late, 

And my sweet love, bequeathed here and else- 
where, never dies. 



ALOOF, dissatisfied, plotting revolt. 
Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, 
Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant. 
With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in 

the depths of my heart, proud as any. 
Lifted now and always against whoever scorn- 
ing assumes to rule me. 
Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, 

brooding, with many wiles, 
(Though it was thought I was baffled and dis- 

pel'd, and my wiles done, but that will never 

be,) 
Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in 

new lands duly appearing (and old ones 

also), 
Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal 

with any, real as any. 
Nor time nor change shall ever change me or 

my words. 



The 
Revolt 
of Evil 



The 

Fusing 

Spirit 



Mystic 
Com- 
munion 



SANTA SPIRITA, breather, life, 
Beyond the hght, Kghter than Hght, 
Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping 

easily above hell. 
Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine 

own perfume, 
Including all life on earth, touching, including 

God, including Saviour and Satan, 
Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what 

were all ? what were God ?) 
Essence of forms, life of the real identities, per- 
manent, positive, (namely the unseen,) 
Life of the great round world, the sun and 

stars, and of man, I, the general soul. 
Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most 

solid, 
Breathe my breath also through these songs. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death. 

■ ! ■■ ! 

I SHOULD say, indeed, that only in the per- 
fect uncontamination and solitariness of 
individuality may the spirituality of religion 
positively come forth at all. Only here, com- 

36 " 



munion with the mysteries, the eternal prob- 
lems, whence? whither? Alone, and iden- 
tity, and the mood — and the soul emerges, 
and all statements, churches, sermons, melt 
away like vapors. Alone, and silent thought 
and awe, and aspiration — and then the in- 
terior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen in- 
scription, in magic ink, beams out its won- 
drous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, 
and priests expound, but it is exclusively for 
the noiseless operation of one's isolated self to 
enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the 
divine levels, and commune with the unut- 
terable. Democratic Vistas, 



WE consider bibles and reHglons divine; 
I do not say they are not divine, 
I say they have all grown out of you, and may 

grow out of you still. 
It is not they who give the life, it is you who 

give the life. 
Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or 
trees from the earth, than they are shed out 
of you. A Song for Occupations. 



The 
Subjec- 
tiveness 
of Re- 
ligion 



87 



The 
Last 
Ideal 



AS we have intimated, offsetting the ma- 
x\ terial civiHzation of our race, our nation- 
ahty, its wealth, territories, factories, popula- 
tion, products, trade, and military and naval 
strength, and breathing breath of life into all 
these, and more, must be its moral civilization 
— the formulation, expression, and aidancy 
whereof, is the very highest height of litera- 
ture. The climax of this loftiest range of civil- 
ization, rising above all the gorgeous shows and 
results of wealth, intellect, power, and art, as 
such — above even theology and religious 
fervor — is to be its development, from the 
eternal bases, and the fit expression, of ab- 
solute Conscience, moral soundness. Justice. 
. . . Even in religious fervor there is a touch 
of animal heat. But moral conscientiousness, 
crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike only, en- 
tirely human, awes and enchants me forever. 
Great is emotional love, even in the order of 
the rational universe. But, if we must make 
gradations, I am clear there is something 
greater. Power, love, veneration, products, 
genius, esthetics, tried by subtlest compari- 
sons, analyses, and in serenest moods, some- 



88 



where fail, somehow become vain. Then 
noiseless, with flowing steps, the lord, the sun, 

[the last ideal comes. By the names right, 
justice, truth we suggest, but do not describe 
it. To the world of men it remains a dream, an 
idea as they call it. But no dream is it to the 
wise — but the proudest, almost only solid, last- 
ing thing of all. ... Its analogy in the mate- 
rial universe is what holds together this world, 

[and every object upon it, and carries its dy- 
namics on forever sure and safe. Its lack, and 
the persistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology, 
literature, politics, business, and even sermon- 
izing, these times, or any times, still leaves the 
abysm, the mortal flaw and smutch, mocking 
civilization to-day, with all its unquestioned 
triumphs, and all the civiHzation so far known. 

Democratic Vistas, 

OTHOU transcendent. Nirvana 

Nameless, the fibre and the breath. 
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, 

thou centre of them. 
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, 
the loving, 

■■ M_-LUJ I J I L III» W« ll I U I I Mil I I I _| . I I I I 

89 



Nirvana 



Thou moral, spiritual fountain — affection's 
source — thou reservoir, 

(O pensive soul of me — O thirst unsatisfied 
— waltest not there ? 

Waltest not haply for us somev^here there the 
Comrade perfect ?) 

Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, suns, 
systems. 

That, circling, move In order, safe, harmon- 
ious, 

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, 

How should I think, how breathe a single 
breath, how speak. If, out of myself, 

I could not launch, to those, superior uni- 
verses ? 



Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 

At Nature and Its wonders, Time and Space 

and Death, 
But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou 

actual Me, 
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs. 
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of 

Space. 



90 



; Greater than stars or suns, 
Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth; 
J What love than thine and ours could wider 

amplify ? 
iWhat aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and 

ours, O soul ? 
,What dreams of the ideal? what plans of 

purity, perfection, strength ? 
What cheerful willingness for others' sake to 

give up all ? 
For others' sake to suffer all ? 



Nirvana 



Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time 

achieved, 
The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the 

voyage done. 
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, 

the aim attained, 
As fiird with friendship, love complete, the 
I Elder Brother found. 
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. 

Passage to India, 



91 



1l 



V. DEATH AND IMMORTALITY 



I 



I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the 

day cannot, 

1 see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited 

^y ^^^^^- Night on the Prairies. 



D 



AREST thou now, O Soul, 
Walk out with me toward the unknown 
region. 

Where neither ground is for the feet nor any 
path to follow ? 

No map is there, nor guide, 
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, 
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor Hps, nor 
eyes, are in that land. 

I know it not, O Soul, 
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us. 
All waits undream'd of in that region, that in- 
accessible land. 

Till when the ties loosen. 
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, 
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any 
bounds, bound us. 

Then we burst forth, we float. 
In Time and Space, O Soul, prepared for them, 
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) 
them to fulfil, O Soul. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death, 



The Un- 
known 
Region 



95 



"Whith- 
er 
Mock- 
ing 
Life?" 



DOWN from the gardens of Asia descend- 
ing, radiating, 

Adam and Eve appear; then their myriad 
progeny after them, 

Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless 
explorations, 

With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, 
with never-happy hearts. 

With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore un- 
satisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life? 



Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children ? 

Who justify these restless explorations ? 

Who speak the secret of impassive earth ? 

Who bind it to us? What is this separate 
Nature so unnatural ? 

What is this earth to our affections (un- 
loving earth, without a throb to answer 
ours. 

Cold earth, the place of graves) ? 



Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and 

shall be carried out: 
Perhaps even now the time has arrived. 

_ 



After the seas are all crossM, (as they seem al- 
ready cross'd,) 

After the great captains and engineers have 
accomplish'd their work, 

After the noble inventors, after the scientists, 
the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, 

Finally shall come the poet worthy that name. 

The true son of God shall come singing his 
songs. 

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O 
scientists and inventors, shall be justified; 

All these hearts as of fretted children shall be 
sooth'd; 

All affection shall be fully responded to, the 
secret shall be told; 

All these separations and gaps shall be taken 
up and hook'd and link'd together; 

The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voice- 
less earth, shall be completely justified; 

Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accom- 
plished and compacted by the true Son of 
God, the poet, 

(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer 
the mountains) 



"Whith- 
er O 
Mock- 
ing 
Life?" 



97 



He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to 
some purpose,) 

Nature and Man shall be disjoln'd and dif- 
fused no more, 

The true son of God shall absolutely fuse 
them. Passage to India. 



The Idea 
of Im- 
mortal- 
ity in 
Democ- 
racy 



I AM not sure but the last inclosing subli- 
mation of race or poem is, what it thinks of 
death. After the rest has been comprehended 
and said, even the grandest — after those con- 
tributions to mightiest nationality, or to sweet- 
est song, or to the best personaHsm, male or 
female, have been glean' d from the rich and 
varied themes of tangible life, and have been 
fully accepted and sung, and the pervading 
fact of visible existence, with the duty it de- 
volves, is rounded and apparently completed, 
it still remains to be really completed by suf- 
fusing through the whole and several, that 
other pervading invisible fact, so large a part 
(is it not the largest part ?) of life here, com- 
bining the rest, and furnishing, for person or 
State, the only permanent and unitary mean- 
ing to all, even the meanest life, consistently 



98 



with the dignity of the universe, in Time. As 
from the ehgibility to this thought, and the 
cheerful conquest of this fact, flash forth the 
first distinctive proofs of the soul, so to me 
(extending it only a little further) the ultimate 
Democratic purports, the ethereal and spiritual 
ones, are to concentrate here, and as fixed 
stars, radiate hence. For, in my opinion, it is 
no less than this idea of immortality, above all 
other ideas, that is to enter into, and vivify, and 
give crov^ning religious stamp to democracy 
in the Nev^ World. Preface, 1876. 



I 



KNOW I am soHd and sound : 
To me the converging objects of the uni- 
verse perpetually flow^; 
All are written to me, and I must get what the 
writing means. 



"I know 
I am 
Death- 
less" 



I know I am deathless; 

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by 

a carpenter's compass; 
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue 

cut with a burnt stick at night. 



99 



"IKnow 

lam 

August" 



I know I am august: 

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or 
be understood; 

I see that the elementary laws never apolo- 
gize, 

(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level 
I plant my house by, after all). 



I exist as I am, that is enough: 

If no other in the world be aware I sit content, 

And if each and all be aware I sit content. 

One world is aware, and by far the largest to 

me, and that is myself; 
And whether I come to my own to-day or in 

ten thousand or ten million years, 
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal 

cheerfulness I can wait. 

My foothold is tenon'd and mortisM in gran- 
ite. 
I laugh at what you call dissolution. 
And I know the amplitude of time. 

Song of Myself, 



lOO 



ALL, all for immortality; 
^ Love like the light silently wrapping 
all, 
Nature's amelioration blessing all, 
The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine 

and certain. 
Forms, objects, grov^ths, humanities, to spir- 
itual images ripening. 

Give me, O God, to sing that thought; 
Give me, give him or her I love this quench- 
i less faith. 
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld 

withhold not from us. 
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and 

Space, 
Health, peace, salvation universal. 

Is it a dream ? 

Nay, but the lack of it the dream. 

And faiHng it life's lore and wealth a dream. 

And all the world a dream. 

Songs of the UniversaL 



"All, all 
for Im- 
mortal- 
ity" 



lOI 



"The 

Smallest 

Sprout 

Shows 

that 

there 

is no 

Death" 



To See 
the Soul 



I WISH I could translate the hints about the 
dead young men and women, 
And the hints about old men and mothers, and 
the offspring taken soon out of their laps. 

What do you think has become of the young 

and old men ? 
And what do you think has become of the 

women and children ? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 

The smallest sprout shows there is really no 

death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, and 

does not wait at the end to arrest it, 
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing col- 
lapses. 

And to die is different from any what one sup- 
posed, and luckier. Song of Myself, 

WAS somebody asking to see the soul ? 
See, your own shape and countenance, 
persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the 
running rivers, the rocks and sands. 



102 



All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen 

them; 
How can the real body ever die and be 

buried ? 



To See 
the Soul 



Of your real body and any man's or woman's 

real body, 
Item for item it will elude the hands of the 

corpse-cleaners and pass to fitting spheres, 
Carrying what has accrued to it from the 

moment of birth to the moment of death. 



Not the types set up by the printer return their 
impression, the meaning, the main concern, 

Any more than a man's substance and life or 
a woman's substance and life return in the 
body and the soul. 

Indifferently before death and after death. 

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, 
the main concern and includes and is the 
soul; 

Whoever you are, how superb and how divine 
is your body, or any part of it! 

Starting from Paumanoky p. 25. 



103 



The 
Spiritu- 
ality of 
the 
Material 



THE soul, 
Forever and forever — longer than soil is 
brown and solid — longer than v^ater ebbs 
and flows. 



I will make the poems of materials, for I think 
they are to be the most spiritual poems, 

And I will make the poems of my body and of 
mortality. 

For I think I shall then supply myself with the 
poems of my soul and of immortality. 

Starting from Paumanok, p. 21. 



Assur- 
ances 



I NEED no assurances, I am a man who is 
preoccupied of his own soul; 

I do not doubt that from under the feet and 
beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, 
are now looking faces I am not cognizant of, 
calm and actual faces; 

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of 
the world are latent in any iota of the world; 

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni- 
verses are limitless, in vain I try to think 
how limitless; 



104 



I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems Assur- 
of orbs play their swift sports through the 
air on purpose, and that I shall one day be 
eligible to do as much as they, and more than 
they; 

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on 
and on millions of years; 

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, 
and exteriors have their exteriors, and that 
the eyesight has another eyesight, and the 
hearing another hearing, and the voice an- 
other voice; 

I do not doubt that the passionately wept 
deaths of young men are provided for, 
and that the deaths of young women and 
the deaths of little children are provided 
for; 
; (Did you think Life was so well provided for, 
and Death, the purport of all Life, is not 
well provided for ?) 

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter 
what the horrors of them, no matter whose 
wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone 
down, are provided for, to the minutest 
points; 



105 



I do not doubt that whatever can possibly hap- 
pen anywhere at any time, is provided for in 
the inherences of things. 

I do not think Life provides for all and for 
Time and Space, but I beHeve Heavenly 
Death provides for all. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death, 



The 

Purpose 

and 

Essence 

of the 

Known 

Life 



AND I have dream'd that the purpose and 
L essence of the known life, the transient, 
Is to form and decide identity for the unknown 
life, the permanent. 

If otherwise all came but to ashes of dung. 

If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! 

for we are betray'd. 
Then indeed suspicion of death. 

Do you suspect death ? If I were to suspect 
death I should die now. 

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well- 
suited toward annihilation ? 

Pleasantly and well-suited I walk; | 

Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it 
is good; 

io6 



The whole universe indicates that it is good, 
The past and the present indicate that it is 
good. 



"Noth- 
ing but- 
Immor- 
tality " 



How beautiful and perfect are the animals! 
How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing 

upon it! 
What is called good is perfect, and what is 

called bad is just as perfect; 
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, 

and the imponderable fluids are perfect; 
Slowly and surely they have pass'd on to this, 

and slowly and surely they yet pass on. 

I swear I think now that everything without 

exception has an eternal soul ! 
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the 

weeds of the sea have! the animals! 

I swear I think there is nothing but immor- 
tality! 

That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the 
nebulous float is for it, and the cohering 
is for it ! 



107 



And all preparation is for it — and identity is 
for it — and life and materials are alto- 
gether for it ! 

To Think of Time, 



A Carol 

to 

Death 



COME lovely and soothing death, 
Undulate round the world, serenely ar- 
riving, arriving. 
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
Sooner or later delicate death. 



Prais'd be the fathomless universe, 

For life and joy, and for objects and knov^l- 

edge curious. 
And for love, sweet love — but praise! praise! 



praise 



For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfold- 
ing death. 



Dark mother always gliding near with soft 

feet, 
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest 

welcome ? 



io8 



Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above 

all, 
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed 

come, come unfalteringly. 

Approach strong deliveress, 

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I 

joyously sing the dead. 
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee. 
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death. 

From me to thee glad serenades. 

Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adorn- 
ments and feastings for thee. 

And the sights of the open landscape and the 
high-spread sky are fitting, 

And life and the fields, and the huge and 
thoughtful night. 

The night in silence under many a star. 

The ocean shore and the husky whispering 

' wave whose voice I know. 

And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well 

^ veil'd death. 

And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 



A Carol 

to 

Death 



109 



To Ex- 
plore the 
Vacant 
Vast 
Sur- 
round- 
ing 



Over the tree-tops I float thee a song. 

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the 
myriad fields and the prairies wide, 

Over the dense pack'd cities all and the teem- 
ing wharves and ways 

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O 
death. 
When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomed, 



A noiseless patient spider, 
I mark'd where on a promontory it 
stood isolated, 
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast sur- 
rounding. 
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament 

out of itself. 
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding 
them. 

And you, O my soul, where you stand. 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans 

of space. 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seek- 
ing the spheres to connect them. 



no 



Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till 
the ductile anchor hold, 

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch some- 
where, O my soul. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death, 



HAVE you guess'd you yourself would 
not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles ? 
Have you fear'd the future would be nothing 
to you ? 

Is to-day nothing ? Is the beginningless past 

nothing ? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely 

nothing. To Think of Time, 

AS I watch'd the ploughman ploughing, 
. Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the 
harvester harvesting, 
I saw there too, O Life and Death, your anal- 
ogies, 
(Life, life is the tillage, and death is the har- 
vest according.) 

Whispers of Heavenly Death, 



Have 
You 

Dreaded 
these 
Earth- 
Beetles? 



"Life is 
the TiU- 



III 



"Living 
are the 
Dead" 



PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words the Dead I write, 
For living are the Dead, 
(Haply the only living, only real,) 
And I the apparition, I the spectre. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death, 



112 



VI. LITERATURE AND ART 



■ 



After all not to create only, or found only. 

But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,! 

To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free. 

Song of the Exposition^ 



FEW are aware how the great literature 
penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes 
aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle 
ways, with irresistible power, constructs, sus- 
tains, demolishes at will. Why tower, in 
reminiscence, above all the nations of the 
earth, two special lands, petty in themselves, 
yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar ? 
Immortal Judah lives, and Greece immortal 
lives, in a couple of poems. 
J Democratic Vistas, 

J T T is not generally realized, but it is true, 
i as the genius of Greece, and all the sociol- 
ogy, personality, politics and religion of those 
wonderful states, resided in their literature or 
esthetics, that what was afterwards the main 
support of European chivalry, the feudal, ec- 
clesiastical, dynastic world over there — form- 
ing its osseous structure, holding it together 
for hundreds, thousands of years, preserving 
its flesh and bloom, giving it form, decision, 
rounding it out, and so saturating it in the 
conscious and unconscious blood, breed, be- 
lief, and intuitions of men, that it still pre- 



The Im- 
mortal- 
ity of 
Judah 
and 
Greece 



The 
Litera- 
ture of 
Feudal- 
ism 



115 



Litera- 
ture and 
Person- 
ality 



The 
Need 
of a New 
Litera- 
ture 



vails powerful to this day, in defiance of the 
mighty changes of time — was its literature, 
permeating to the very marrow, especially that 
major part, its enchanting songs, ballads, and 
poems. Democratic Vistas. 

THE literature, songs, esthetics, etc., of a 
country are of importance principally 
because they furnish the materials and sugges- 
tions of personality for the women and men of 
that country, and enforce them in a thousand 
effective ways. Democratic Vistas, 

PASS'D! pass'd! for us forever pass'd that 
once so mighty world, now void, inani- 
mate phantom world, 
Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all 

its gorgeous legends, myths. 
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and war- 
like lords and courtly dames, 
Pass'd to its charnel vault, laid on the shelf, 

coffin'd with crown and armor on, 
Blazon'd by Shakespeare's purple page. 
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme. 

Song of the Exposition, 



ii6 



AWAY with old romance! 
l\. Away with novels, plots, and plays of 

foreign courts, 
Away with love-verses sugar'd in rhyme, the 

intrigues, amours of idlers. 

To you ye reverent sane sisters, 

I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets 

and for art, 
To exalt the present and the real. 
To teach the average man the glory of his daily 

walk and trade. Song of the Exposition, 



Super- 
ber 

Themes 
for 
Poets 



FOLLOWING the Modern Spirit, the 
real Poems of the Present, ever solidi- 
fying and expanding into the Future, must 
vocalize the vastness and splendor and reality 
with which Scientism has invested Man and 
the Universe (all that is called Creation), and 
must henceforth launch Humanity, into new 
orbits, consonant with the vastness, splendor, 
and reality, (unknown to the old poems,) like 
new systems of orbs, balanced upon them- 
selves, revolving in limitless space, more subtle 



The Sci- 
entific 
Basis 



117 



than the stars. Poetry, so largely hitherto and 
even at present wedded to children's tales, and 
to mere amourousness, upholstery, and super- 
ficial rhyme, will have to accept, and while not 
denying the Past, nor the Themes of the 
Past, will be revivified by this tremendous 
innovation, the Kosmic Spirit, which must 
henceforth, in my opinion, be the background 
and underlying impetus, more or less visible, of 
all first-class songs. Preface, 1876. 



Science 
Not All 



ACCEPT Reality and dare not question 
. it. 
Materialism first and last imbuing. 



Hurrah for positive science! long live exact 
demonstration ! 

Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches 
of lilac. 

This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this 
made a grammar of the old cartouches; 

These mariners put the ship through dan- 
gerous unknown seas. 

This is the geologist, this works with the scal- 
pel, and this is a mathematician. 



118 



Gentlemen, to you the first honors always ! 
Your facts are useful and real, and yet they 

are not my dwelling, 
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. 

Song of Myself, 



WHAT however do we definitely mean by 
New World Literature? Are we not 
doing well enough here already ? Are not the 
United States this day busily using, working, 
more printers' type, more presses, than any 
other country? uttering and absorbing more 
publications than any other ? . . . Many will 
come under this delusion — but my purpose is 
to dispel it. I say a nation may hold and cir- 
culate rivers and oceans of very readable print, 
journals, magazines, novels, library-books, 
^* poetry," etc., such as the States to-day 
possess and circulate — of unquestionable aid 
and value . . . and yet, all the while the said 
nation, land, strictly speaking, may possess no 
literature at all. Democratic Vistas, 



Printed 
Pages 
Not 
Litera- 
ture 



119 



Origi- 
nality 
in Art 



IN the need of poems, philosophy, politics, 
mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of 
art, an appropriate native grand opera, ship- 
craft, or any craft, he is greatest forever and 
ever who contributes the greatest original 
practical example. The cleanest expression 
is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself 
and makes one. Preface^ I^SS- 



"Fear 
not, O 
Muse!" 



FEAR not, O Muse! truly new ways and 
days receive, surround you; 
I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel 

fashion, 
And yet the same old human race, the same 

within, without, 
Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, 

yearnings the same. 
The same old love, beauty and use the same. 

Song of the Exposition, 



The 

English 
Lan- 
guage 



THE EngHsh language befriends the grand 
American expression — it is brawny 
enough, and limber and full enough. On the 
tough stock of a race who through all change 



130 



of circumstance was never without the idea 
of political Hberty, which is the animus of all 
liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier 
and gayer and subtler and more elegant 
tongues. It is the powerful language of re- 
sistance — it is the dialect of common sense. 
It is the speech of the proud and melancholy 
races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen 
tongue to express growth, faith, self-esteem, 
freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, am- 
plitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It 
is the medium that shall well-nigh express the 
inexpressible. Preface^ 1855. 

REPEATING our inquiry, what, then, do 
. we mean by real literature ? especially 
the American literature of the future ? Hard 
questions to meet. The clues are inferential, 
and turn us to the past. At best, we can only 
offer suggestions, comparisons, circuits. 

It must still be reiterated, as, for the pur- 
pose of these memoranda, the deep lesson of 
history and time, that all else in the contribu- 
tions of a nation or age, through its politics, 
materials, heroic personalities, military eclat, 



What is 
Real 
Litera- 
ture? 



121 



Real 

Litera- 

tiire 



etc., remains crude, and defers, in any close 
and thorough-going estimate, until vitalized 
by national, original archetypes in Hterature. 
They only put the nation in form, finally tell 
anything — prove, complete anything — per- 
petuate anything. Without doubt, some of 
the richest and most pov^erful and populous 
communities of the antique world, and some of 
the grandest personalities and events, have, 
to after and present times, left themselves en- 
tirely unbequeath'd. Doubtless, greater than 
any that have come down to us, were among 
those lands, heroisms, persons, that have not 
come down to us at all, even by name, date, or 
location. Others have arrived safely, as from 
voyages over wide, century-stretching seas. 
The little ships, the miracles that have buoy'd 
them, and by incredible chances safely con- 
vey'd them, (or the best of them, their mean- 
ing and essence), over long wastes, darkness, 
lethargy, ignorance, etc., have been a few in- 
scriptions — a few immortal compositions, 
small in size, yet compassing what measure- 
less values of reminiscence, contemporary por- 
traitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with 



123 



deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and 
touch forever the old, new body, and the old, 
new soul! These! and still these! bearing the 
freight so dear — dearer than pride — dearer 
than love. All the best experience of human- 
ity, folded, saved, freighted to us here. Some 
of these tiny ships we call Old and New Testa- 
ment, Homer, Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, etc. 
Precious minims ! I think, if we were forced to 
choose, rather than have you, and the likes of 
you, and what belongs to, and has grown of 
you, blotted out and gone, we could better 
afford, appalling as that would be, to lose all 
actual ships, this day fastened by wharf, or 
floating on wave, and see them, with all their 
cargoes, scuttled and sent to the bottom. 

Democratic Vistas, 



GATHERED by geniuses of city, race, or 
age, and put by them in highest of art's 
forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar 
combinations and the outshows of that city, 
age, or race, its particular modes of the uni- 
versal attributes and passions, its faiths, 
heroes, lovers and gods, wars, traditions, 



Our 

Inheri- 
tance 
from the 
Litera- 
ture of 
the Past 



123 



Our 

Inheri- 
tance 



Struggles, crimes, emotions, joys, (or the subtle 
spirit of these,) having been pass'd on to us to 
illumine our own selfhood, and its experiences 
— what they supply, indispensable and high- 
est, if takeri away, nothing else in all the 
world's boundless storehouses could make up 
to us, or ever again return. 

For us, along the great highways of time, 
those monuments stand — those forms of 
majesty and beauty. For us those beacons 
burn through all the nights. Unknown Egyp- 
tians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn 
and apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew 
prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of light- 
ning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive 
songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies 
and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, 
brooding love and peace, Hke a dove; Greek, 
creating eternal shapes of physical and esthetic 
proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the sword, 
and the codex; — of the figures, some far off 
and veird, others nearer and visible; Dante, 
stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, 
not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and 
the great painters, architects, musicians; rich 



124 



Shakspere, luxuriant as the sun, artist and Om 
singer of feudalism in its sunset, with all the tance 
gorgeous colors, owner thereof, and using 
them at will; and so to such as German Kant 
and Hegel, where they, though near us, leap- 
ing over the ages, sit again, impassive, imper- 
turbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, 
and the like of these, is it too much, indeed, 
to return to our favorite figure, and view them 
as orbs and systems of orbs, moving in free 
paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the 
kosmic intellect, the soul ? 

Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, 
in your atmospheres, grown not for America, 
but rather for her foes, the feudal and the old 
— while our genius is democratic and modern. 
Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath 
of life into our New World's nostrils — not to 
enslave us, as now, but, for our needs, to breed 
a spirit like your own — perhaps, (dare we to 
say it ?) to dominate, even destroy, what you 
yourselves have left! On your plane, and no 
less, but even higher and wider, must we mete 
and measure for to-day and here. I demand 
races of orbic bards, with unconditional un- 

125 



compromising sway. Come forth, sweet dem- 
ocratic despots of the west ! 

Democratic Vistas. 



The 

Mastery 
of the 
Poet 



WHATEVER stagnates in the flat of cus- 
tom or obedience or legislation, the 
great poet never stagnates. Obedience does 
not master him, he masters it. High up out 
of reach he stands, turning a concentrated 
light — he turns the pivot with his finger — he 
baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and 
easily overtakes and envelops them. The 
time straying toward infidelity and confections 
and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. 

Preface, 1 855. 



Histori- 
an and 
Prophet 



WITHOUT effort and without exposing 
in the least how it is done, the great- 
est poet brings the spirit of any or all events 
and passions and scenes and persons, some 
more and some less, to bear on your individual 
character as you hear or read. 

Past and present and future are not dis- 
joined but join'd. The greatest poet forms 
the consistence of what is to be from what 



126 



has been and is. . . . He says to the past, 
Rise and walk before me that I may reahze 
you. He learns the lesson — he places him- 
self where the future becomes present. 

Preface, 1 855. 

THE greatest poet hardly knows pettiness 
or triviality. If he breathes into any- 
thing that was before thought small it dilates 
with the grandeur and life of the universe. 

Preface, 1855. 

THE land and sea, the animals, fishes and 
birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, 
the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small 
themes — but folks expect of the poet to indi- 
cate more than the beauty and dignity which 
always attach to dumb real objects — they 
expect him to indicate the path between reality 
and their souls. Preface, 1855. 

THE greatest poet does not moralize or 
make applications of morals — he knows 
the soul. The soul has that measureless pride 
which consists in never acknowledging any 



127 



No 

Theme 
Small 
to the 
Poet 



"The 
Path be- 
tween 
Reality 
and the 
Soul" 



The 
Pride 
of the 
Soul 



lessons or deductions but its own. But it 
has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and 
the one balances the other, and neither can 
stretch too far while it stretches in company 
with the other. The inmost secrets of art 
sleep with the twain. The greatest poet has 
lain close betwixt both, and they are vital in 
his style and thoughts. Preface ^ 1855. 



The 

Poet's 

Passion 



THE known universe has one complete 
lover, and that is the greatest poet. He 
consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent 
which chance happens, and which possible 
contingency of fortune or misfortune, and per- 
suades daily and hourly his delicious pay. 
What balks or breaks others is fuel for his 
burning progress to contact and amorous joy. 
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure 
dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All 
expected from heaven or from the highest, he 
is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak, or 
the scenes of the winter woods, or the presence 
of children playing, or with his arm round the 
neck of a man or woman. His love above all 
love has leisure and expanse — he leaves 



128 



room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or 
suspicious lover — he is sure — he scorns in- 
tervals. His experience and the showers and 
thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar 
him — suffering and darkness cannot — 
death and fear cannot. To him complaint 
and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and 
rotten in the earth — he saw them buried. 
The sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore 
of the sea, than he is the fruition of his love, 
and of all perfection and beauty. 

^^ Preface, 1 855. 



THE direct trial of him who would be the 
greatest poet is to-day. If he does not 
flood himself with the immediate age as with 
vast oceanic tides . . .. if he be not himself 
the age transfigured, and if to him is not open'd 
the eternity which gives similitude to all pe- 
riods and locations and processes, and animate 
and inanimate forms, and which is the bond 
of time, and rises up from its inconceivable 
vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming 
shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile 
anchors of Hfe, and makes the present spot 



The Test 
of the 
Greatest 
Poet 



129 



The 

Poetic 

Quality 



the passage from what was to what shall be, 
and commits itself to the representation of 
this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty 
beautiful children of the wave — let him merge 
in the general run, and wait his development. 

Preface^ 1855. 

THE poetic quality is not marshal'd in 
rhyme and uniformity, or abstract ad- 
dresses to things, nor in melancholy com- 
plaints or good precepts, but is the life of these 
and much else and is in the soul. 

Preface y 1855. 



The 

Fruition 
of 
Beauty 



THE fruition of beauty is no chance of miss 
or hit — it is as inevitable as life — it is 
as exact and plumb as gravitation. 

Preface, 1855. 



Rhyme 

and 

Rhythm 



THE profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds 
of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, 
and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its 
own roots in the ground out of sight. The 
rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show 



130 



the free growth of metrical laws, and bud 
from them as unerringly and loosely as Hlacs 
and roses on a bush, and take shapes as com- 
pact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges 
and melons and pears and shed the perfume 
impalpable to form. Preface^ i^SS- 

THE art of art, the glory of expression and 
the sunshine of the light of letters, is 
simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity — 
nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack 
of definiteness. Preface^ 1855. 

TO speak in literature with the perfect 
rectitude and insouciance of the move- 
ment of animals, and the unimpeachableness 
of the sentiment of trees in the woods and 
grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph 
of art. Preface, i^SS- 

THE fluency and ornaments of the finest 
poems or music or orations or recita- 
tions are not independent but dependent. All 
beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beau- 



Simpli- 
city in 
Art 



"The 
Flawless 
Tri- 
umph 
of Art" 



How to 

Live 

Poetry 



131 



What 
You 
Shall Do 



tiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunc- 
tion in a man or woman, it is enough — the 
fact will prevail through the universe; but the 
gaggery and gilt of a million years will not pre- 
vail. Who troubles himself about his orna- 
ments or fluency is lost. This is what you 
shall do: Love the earth and sun and the ani- 
mals, despise riches, give alms to every one 
that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, 
devote your income and labor to others, hate 
tyrants, argue not concerning God, have pa- 
tience and indulgence toward the people, take 
off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or 
to any man or number of men — go freely with 
powerful uneducated persons, and with the 
young, and with the mothers of families .... 
re-examine all you have been told in school or 
church or in any book, and dismiss whatever 
insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall 
be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, 
not only in its words, but in the silent lines of 
its lips and face, and between the lashes of 
your eyes, and in every motion and joint of 



your body. 



Preface, 1 855. 



132 



STILL the final test of poems, or any char- 
acter or work, remains. The prescient 
poet projects himself centuries ahead, and 
judges performer or performance after the 
changes of time. Does it live through them ? 
Does it still hold on untired ? Will the same 
style^ and the direction of genius to similar 
points, be satisfactory now ? . . . . Have the 
marches of tens and hundreds and thousands 
of years made willing detours to the right hand 
and the left hand for his sake ? Is he beloved 
long and long after he is buried ? . . . . 

A great poem is for ages and ages in com- 
mon, and for all degrees and complexions, 
and all departments and sects, and for a wom- 
an as much as for a man, and a man as much 
as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a 
man or woman, but rather a beginning. 

Preface, 1855. 



The 
Final 
Test of 
Poems 



133 



VII. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 



He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own 

proves the width of my own; 
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy 

the teacher. g^^^ ^^ ^^^^;^ 



As if It were necessary to trot back genera- 
. tion after generation to the eastern rec- 
ords! As if the beauty and sacredness of the 
demonstrable must fall behind that of the 
mythical ! As if men do not make their mark 
out of any times! As if the opening of the 
western continent by discovery, and what has 
transpired in North and South America, were 
less than the small theatre of the antique, or 
{the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages! 

First Preface, 



The 
Great- 
ness of 
the 
Present 



I KNOW that the past was great and that 
the future will be great. 
And I know that both curiously conjoint in 

the present time. 
And that where I am or you are this present 
day, there is the centre of all days, all 
races, 
And there is the meaning to us of all that has 
ever come of races and days, or ever will 
come. 

With Antecedents, 



Now 
is Our 
Time 



137 



No 

Better 

Minute 

than 

this 



THIS minute that comes to me over the 
past decillions, 
There is no better than it and now. 

Song of Myself, 



The 

Divinity 
of the 
Ego 



Miracles 
Every- 
where 



WHAT do you suppose creation is ? 
What do you suppose will satisfy the 
soul, except to walk free and own no su- 
perior ? 

What do you suppose I would intimate to 
you in a hundred ways, but that man or 
woman is as good as God ? 

And that there is no God any more divine than 
Yourself? 

And that that is what the oldest and newest 
myths finally mean ? 

And that you or any one must approach crea- 
tions through such laws ? 

Laws for Creations, 



WHY, who makes much of a miracle ? 
As to me I know of nothing else but 
miracles. 



138 



Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses 

toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just 

in the edge of the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or 

sleep in the bed at night with any one I 

love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me, riding in the 

car. 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of 

a summer forenoon. 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in 

the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of 

stars shining so quiet and bright. 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new 

moon in spring; .... 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me mir- 
acles, 
(The whole referring, yet each distinct and in 

its place. 



Miracles 



139 



To me every hour of the Hght and dark is a 

miracle, 
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, 
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is 

spread v^ith the same, 
Every foot of the interior swarms with the 

same. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle, 
The fishes that swim — the rocks — the mo- 
tion of the waves — the ships with men in 
them, ' 
What stranger miracles are there ? 

Miracles. 



A Model 
for 

Manli- 
ness 



ATTEMPTING, then, however crudely, 
uLJL a basic model or portrait of personality 
for general use for the manliness of the States, 
(and doubtless that is most useful which is 
most simple and comprehensive for all, and 
toned low enough,) we should prepare the 
canvas well beforehand. Parentage must 
consider itself in advance. (Will the time 
hasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall 
become a science — and the noblest science ?) 



140 



To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred 
physique is indispensable; the questions of 
food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, diges- 
tion, can never be intermitted. Out of these 
we descry a well-begotten selfhood — in youth, 
fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of ad- 
venture; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under 
control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, 
neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily 
figure, the movements easy, the complexion 
showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, 
breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice 
whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and 
steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing — and 
a general presence that holds its own in the 
company of the highest. (For it is native per- 
sonality, and that alone, that endows a man to 
stand before presidents or generals, or in any 
distinguish'd collection, with aplomb — and 
not culture, or any knowledge or intellect what- 
ever.) Democratic Vistas, 



IN business (this all-devouring modern word, 
business), the one sole object is, by any 
means pecuniary gain. The magician's ser- 



The 

Blight of 
Money- 
Getting 



141 



pent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; 
and money-making is our magician's serpent, 
remaining to-day sole master in the field. 

Democratic Vistas, 



Reti- 
cence 



I SWEAR I see what is better than to tell 
the best, 
It is always to leave the best untold. 

A Song of the Rolling Earth. 



Self- 
Con- 
scious- 
ness 



I 



KNOW I have the best of time and space, 

and was never measured and never will 

be measured. Song of Myself. 



Individ- 
uality 



HOW beggarly appear arguments before 
a defiant deed! 
How the floridness of the materials of cities 
shrivels before a man's or woman's look ! 

Song of the Broad-Axe, 



Affir- 
mations 



I HAVE said that the soul is not more than 
the body. 
And I have said that the body is not more than 
the soul, 



142 



And nothing, not God, is greater to one than 
one's self is, 

And whoever walks a furlong without sym- 
pathy walks to his own funeral drest in his 
shroud, 

And I or you pocketless of a dime may pur- 
chase the pick of the earth; 

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in 
its pod confounds the learning of all times, 

And there is no trade or employment but the 
young man following it may become a hero, 

And there is no object so soft but it makes a 
hub for the wheel'd universe. 

And I say to any man or woman. Let your soul 
stand cool and composed before a million 
universeSc Song of Myself, 



LOGIC and sermons never convince, 
^ The damp of the night drives deeper into 
my soul. Song of Myself. 



Convic- 
tion 



SAIL forth — steer for the deep waters only. 
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, 
and thou with me. 



Courage 



143 



For we are bound where mariner has not yet 

dared to go, 
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 

O my brave soul ! 

O farther, farther sail! 

O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the 

seas of God ? 
O farther, farther, farther sail ! 

Passage to India. 



To Fill 
One's 
Place is 
Enough 



I 



DO not call one greater and one smaller. 
That which fills its period and place is 
equal to any. 

Song of Myself, 



Appre- 
ciation 



I BELIEVE a leaf of grass is no less than 
the journey work of the stars. 
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain 

of sand, and the egg of the wren. 
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the 

highest, 
And the running blackberry would adorn the 
parlors of heaven. 



144 



And the narrowest hinge In my hand puts to 

scorn all machinery, 
And the cow crunching with depress'd head 

surpasses any statue, 
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sex- 

tillions of infidels. Song of Myself. 



I THINK I could turn and live with ani- Con 
mals, they are so placid and self-contain' d 
I stand and look at them long and long. 



They do not sweat and whine about their con- 
dition. 

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep 
for their sins. 

They do not make me sick discussing their 
duty to God : 

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented 

, with the mania of owning things. 

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that 
lived thousands of years ago, 

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the 
whole earth. 

Song of Myself. 



145 



Nature's 
Lesson 



Com- 
pensa- 
tion 



WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer, 
When the proofs, the figures, were 

ranged in columns before me, 
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to 

add, divide, and measure them. 
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he 

lectured with much applause in the lecture- 
room. 
How soon unaccountable I became tired and 

sick, 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by 

myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time 

to time 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. 

When I Heard the Learn d Astronomer, 

I AM not the poet of goodness only, I do not 
decline to be the. poet of wickedness also. 

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice r 

Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, 

I stand indifferent; 

My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, 

I moisten the roots of all that has grown. 

« i 

146 



Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflag- 
ging pregnancy ? 

Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be 
work'd over and rectified ? 



I find one side a balance and the antipodal side 

a balance, 
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, 
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse 

and early start. 

What behaved well in the past or behaves well 

to-day is not such a wonder: 
The wonder is always and always how there 

can be a mean man or an infidel. 

Song of Myself. 

EVER the right expiration remains to be Pru- 
made about prudence. The prudence 
of the mere wealth and respectability of the 
most esteem'd life appears too faint for the eye 
to observe at all, when little and large alike 
drop quietly aside at the thought of the pru- 
dence suitable for immortality. What is the 

• 

147 



wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or 
seventy or eighty years — to the wisdom 
spaced out by ages, and coming back at a cer- 
tain time with strong reinforcements and rich 
presents, and the clear faces of wedding guests 
as far as you can look, in every direction, run- 
ning gaily toward you ? Preface^ i^SS- 



The Joy 
of Liv- 
ing 



I DOTE on myself; there is that lot of me 
and all so luscious. 
Each moment and whatever happens thrills 
me with joy. 



Oh, I am wonderful ! 

I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence 

the cause of my faintest wish, 
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the 

cause of the friendship I take again. 



That I walk up my stoop, I pause tp consider 

if it really be; 
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me 

more than the metaphysics of books. 



148 



To behold the day-break! 
The Kttle Kght fades the immense and diaph- 
anous shadows, 
The air tastes good to my palate. 

Song of Myself, 

CAUTION seldom goes far enough. It 
has been thought that the prudent citizen 
was the citizen who applied himself to solid 
gains, and did well for himself and for his 
family, and completed a lawful life without 
debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and 
admits these economies as he sees the economies 
of food and sleep, but has higher notions of 
prudence than to think he gives much 
when he gives a few slight attentions at the 
latch of the gate. . . . Beyond the inde- 
pendence of a Kttle sum laid aside for burial- 
money and of a few clap-boards around and 
shingles overhead on a lot of American soil 
own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the 
year's plain clothing and meals, the melan-' 
choly prudence of the abandonment of such a 
great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor 
of years of money-making, with all their 



149 



The 
Real 
Econ- 
omies of 
Life 



Heroism 



Living 
Impulses 
—Not 
Duties 



The 
Superb 
Individ- 
ual 



scorching days and icy nights, and all their 
stifling deceits and underhand dodgings . . . 
and the ghastly chatter of a death without 
serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon 
modern civilization and forethought. 

Preface, 1 855. 

A HEROIC person walks at his ease 
through and out of that custom or prec- 
edent or authority that suits him not. 

Preface, 1 855. 

I GIVE nothing as duties. 
What others give as duties I give as living 
impulses. 
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty .?) 

Song of Myself. 

AN individual is as superb as a nation 
L when he has the qualities which make 
a superb nation. Preface, 1855. 



Thrift 



T 



HRIFT without the loving nod of the 
soul is only a fetid puflP. 

Preface, 1855. 



150 



HAVE you heard that it was good to gain 
the day ? 
I also say it is good to fall: battles are lost in 
the same spirit in which they are won. 



Vivas to those who have fail'd! 

And to those whose war-vessels sank in the 



sea 



And to those themselves who sank in the 

sea! 
And to all generals that lost engagements, and 

all overcoming heroes ! 
And the numberless unknown heroes equal 

to the greatest heroes known. 

Song of Myself, 



I DO not snivel that snivel the world over, 
That months are vacuums and the 
ground but wallow and filth. 
That life is a luck and a sell, and nothing 
remains at the end but threadbare crape 
and tears. 



151 



To those 
who 
have 
Fail'd 



Self- 
Appre- 
ciation 



Whimpering and truckling fold with powders 
for invaUds, conformity goes to the fourth- 
remov'd; 

I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. 

Why should I pray? Why should I venerate 
and be ceremonious ? 

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to 
a hair, counsel'd with doctors and calcu- 
lated close, 

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own 
bones. 

In all people I see myself, none more and not 

one a barley-corn less. 
And the good or bad I say of myself I say 

of them. Song of Myself. 



The 
Influ- 
ence 
of the 
Open 



I THINK heroic deeds were all conceived 
in the open air, and all great poems 
also; 
I think I could stop here myself and do mira- 
cles. 



152 



Now I see the secret of the making of the best 

persons, 
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and 

sleep with the earth. 

Here a great personal deed has room. 

A great deed seizes upon the hearts of the 
whole race of men, 

Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms 
law and mocks all authority and all argu- 
ment against it. Song of the Open Road, 

Here is the test of wisdom: 

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools; 

Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it 

to another not having it; 
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of 

proof, is its own proof. 
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities 

and is content; 
[s the certainty of the reality and immortality 
^ of things, and the excellence of things; 
Something there is in the float of the sight of 

things that provokes it out of the soul. 



The 
Test of 
Wisdom 



153 



Assur- 
ance 



Optim- 
ism 



Patience 



Egotism 



Now I re-examine philosophies and rehgions: 
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not 
prove at all under the spacious clouds and 
along the landscape and flowing currents. 
Song of the Open Road, 

SPOTS or cracks at the window do not 
disturb me; 

Tall and sufficient stand behind and make 

signs to me; 
I read the promise and patiently wait. Faces, 



I 



DO not know what is untried and after- 
_ ward, 

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, 
and cannot fail. Song of Myself, 

I HAVE no mockings or arguments — I 
witness and wait. Song of Myself, 

DO I contradict myself? 
Very well, then, I contradict myself; 
(I am large. I contain multitudes). 

Song of Myself, 



154 



Index 



Adoration, 8i 

AfFectfon, the Cement of, 48 

the Consolation of, 68, 69, 83-85 
Affinity, 62, 63 
Affirmations, 142, 143 
Amaze, a Child's, 78 
America, Land Tolerating All, 41, 42 

a Seething Mass of Materials, 40, 41 
Appreciation, 144, 145 
Architecture, 17 
Art, Democratic, 24-26 

the Flawless Triumph of, 131 

Originality in, 120 

Simplicity in, 131 
Aspiration, 19 
Assurance, 154 
Assurances, 104, 106 



B 

Biography, What is a, 4 

Body, the, 57, 58 ^ 

the Expression of the, 53 
I sing the. Electric, 52 
not more than the Soul, 142 
the Sacredness of the, 58, 59 

155 



Index Brotherhood, the, of Democracy, 47, 48 

Universal, 71 



City, the Great, 32, 38-40 
Christ, What, Appeared for, 34, 35 
Communion, Invisible, 72 
Companionship, 64, 65 

the Joy of, 65 
Compensation, 146, 147 
Comradeship, 48, 50, 51, 64-72 
Contentment, 145 
Conviction, 143 
Courage, 143, 144 

D 

Death, a Carol to, 108-110 

the Smallest Sprout Shows that there is no, 
102 
Democratic Art, 24-26 
Democracy, the Adhesive Love in, 66 
the Brotherhood of, 47, 48 
the Cement of Affection, 48 
Democratic Formula the only Safe 

One, 35 
Centrifugal Forces in, 46 

7^ 



Democracy, *' Earth's Resume Entire," 24 

Evil of Parties, 43 

Faith in, 44 

Idea of Immortality in, 98 

IS Law, 44, 45 

the Love of Comrades in, 67 

Must Grow its Own Art, 24, 25 

the Purport of the Past, 4 

the Purpose of, 23 

Solidarity in, 45 
Duties, Nothing Given as, 150 



Index 



Earth-Beetles, Have You Dreaded these, iii 
Earth's Resume Entire, 24 
Ego, the Divinity of the, 138 

the Miracle of the, 5 

the Omnipotence of the, 5, 6 
Egotism, 154 
English Language Fits American Expression, 120, 

121 
Eternity, Always the Procreant Urge of the World, 

14, 15 
Infinity and, for Me, 17-19 
Evil, the, of Parties, 43 
the Revolt of, 85 



157 



Index Evolution, Personal, 12-14 

There is no Stoppage, 18 
"You will come Forward in due time,^ 
10 



Faces, the Lesson of, 10 
Faith, All-inclusive, 79 

in Democracy, 44 
Female Form, the, 54 
Feudalism, the Literature of, 115, 116 
Future, the Safety of the, 64 



God, 78, 81, 89-91 

the Idea of, 80, 82-86 
Government, the Mission of, 38 
Greece, the Immortality of Judah and, 115 



H 

Historian, To a, 3 

History, a Clue to the, of the Past, 3-4 

the Influences which Stamp, 26, 27 
Hegel, After Reading, 76 
Heroism, 150 



158 



Index 



Idea, the Fervid and Tremendous, 27 
Ideal, the Last, 88, 89 
Identity, the Thought of, 5 
Immortality, All, All for, loi 

Assurances, 104-106 

the Idea of, in Democracy, 98, 99 

For None More than You is, 6 

I Know I Am Deathless, 99, 100 

of the Individual, 15, 16 

of Judah and Greece, Ii5» 

the Purpose of the Known Life, 106, 

107 
" Smallest Sprout Shows that there is 
no Death,'' 102 
Independence, 136 

Individual, the Development of the, 10-12 
Divine in His Own Right, 33 
Each of us Inevitable, 8 
Everything Tallied in the, 16, 17 
the Immortality of the, 15, 16 
the Importance of the, 31 
the Sacredness of the, 7 
the Superb, 150 

Underneath All, Individuals, 8, 9 
Individuality, 142 
Infinity and Eternity for Me, 17, 19 



159 



Index T 

Joy of Personality, 15 

Joyousness and Health in Religion, 81 

Judah, the Immortality of, 115 



Law, Democracy is, 44, 45 

the Reign of, 82, 83 
Leaves of Grass, the Religious Purpose of, 75, 56 
the Vital Bond Between Author 
and Reader, 71, 72 
Life is the Tillage, iii 

the Purpose and Essence of the Known, 106- 

108 
the Real Economies of, 149, 150 
Whither O Mocking, 96-98 
Literature and Personality, 116 

of Feudalism, 115, 116 
Has Never Recognized the People, 37 
the Need of a New, 116 
Our Inheritance from the Past, 123-126 
Printed Pages not, 119 
What is Real, 71, 72 
a Vital Bond in, 71, 72 
Living are the Dead, 112 

the Joy of, 148, 149 

160 



Love, the Adhesive, in Democracy, 66 Index 

the Attraction of Affinity, 62 
the Base of all Metaphysics, 51 
the Madness of, 61, 62 
the Pulse of All, 60, 61 
Reminiscences of, 63 

M 

Man, the Real, of Divine Essence, 32, ^^ 
Manliness, a Model for, 140, 141 
Material, the Spirituality of the, 104 
Metaphysics, the Base of all, 51, 52 
Miracles, Everywhere, 138-140 
Money-Getting, the Blight of, 141, 142 
Moral Conscientiousness, 88 
Mother, the Justified, of Men, 55, 56 
Muse, Fear Not, O, 120 
Music, 17 
Mystic Communion, 86, 87 

N 

Nation, the Modern Composite, 30 

the Welding of the, 6g 
Nature, the Satisfaction of, 146 

the Influence of the Open, 152 
Nirvana, 89-91 

_ 



Index O 

Open, the Influence of the, 152, 153 
Optimism, 154 

P 

Parties, the Evil of, 143 
Passion, the Poet's, 128, 129 
Patience, 154 
People, the, 36 

Literature Has Never Recognized the, 137 
Personality, a Basic Model of, 140, 141 

the History of the Future in, 3 
the Joy of, 15 
Poem, United States the Greatest, 27, 28 
Poems, the Final Test of, 133 
Poet, the, Historian and Prophet, 126 
His Passion, 128, 129 
the Mastery of, 126 
no Theme Small to the, 127 
the Test of the Greatest, 129, 130 
Poetic Quality, the, not Marshal'd in Rhyme and 

Uniformity, 130 
Poetry, How to Live, 131, 132 

Must Vocalize the Reality of Science, 117, 

318 

Politics, the Value of, 42, 43 
Potentialities, Latent, 9, 10 

162 



Present, the Greatness of the, 137 

No Better Minute than Now, 138 
Pride, the Fullspread, of Man, 136 
Priest, the, of the Future, 78, 79 
Property, the Gravitation-hold of, 46, 47 
Prudence, 147, 148 

R 

Religion, the Divine Element in all, 79, 80 
the Emancipation of, 76, 77 
the Immanence of, 77 
the Religious Purpose of Leaves of Grass, 

75,76 

Mystic Communion, 86 

the Subjectiveness of, 87 

the ** Square Deific,'' 82-86 
Reticence, 142 
Rhyme and Rhythm, 130, 131 



Index 



Science, the Conflict of Theology with, 78 

not All, 118, 119 
Self- Appreciation, 151, 152 
Self-Consciousness, 142 
Selfhood, the Joy of a Manly, 15 
Sex, the Meanings of, 59, 60 
Shakespeare, 116 



163 



Index Solidarity, 45, 46 

Solitude, the Yearnings of, 69, 70 

Soul, the Illumination of the Individual, 81, 82 

not more than the Body, 142 

the Path Between Reality and the, 127 

the Pride of the, 127, 128 

to See the, 102, 103 

the Spirituality of the Material, 104 
Spirit, the Fusing, 86 



Tennyson, 116 

Themes for Poets, 117 

Theology, the Conflict of, with Science, 78 

Thrift, 150 

Time, Now is Our, 137 

u 

United States, Essentially the Greatest Poem, 27, 
28 
the Genius of the, 33, 34 
the Role of the, in the Universal 
Drama, 29, 30 
Universal Brotherhood, 171 
Unknown Region, 95 

"The Vacant Vast Surround- 
ing," no. III 



164 



V 
Vivas for those Who Have Fail'd, 151 



Index 



w 

Weihliche, Das Ewig, 54, 55 
Wisdom, the Test of, 153, 154 
Women, the Need for Perfect, 58 

Y 
You, All for, Whoever You Are, 6 



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